


The Glass of Heart's Desire

by Lomonaaeren



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Angst, Aurors, Mirrors, Multi, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-20
Updated: 2014-05-16
Packaged: 2018-01-13 05:04:21
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 36,273
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1213759
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lomonaaeren/pseuds/Lomonaaeren
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Draco discovers a mirror in the Malfoy vaults at Gringotts that can show the viewer not only their heart’s desire, the way that the Mirror of Erised can, but the way to achieve it. In the wake of leaked information on the mirror, thieves attack the Manor, trying to steal it. Harry is in the way to prevent them—and, even if neither Severus nor Draco wanted to offer thanks, this time there are other rewards that Harry might win.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Make Some Noise

**Author's Note:**

> his is a fic written for darke_wulf, who bid on this fic at fandom_aid. She asked for this threesome, hurt/comfort and submissive Harry. I’m sorry this is so incredibly late; I had real trouble settling on an idea. It should be about 9 chapters. Enjoy!

Harry crouched down in the shade of a bush that was sprawling past the incredibly thick fence around Malfoy Manor and looked sharply back and forth. No, he couldn’t see anyone yet. And there was no sound of footsteps on gravel, or sensation of magic appearing nearby, or crack of Apparition.  
  
Harry frowned and rubbed the scar above his left eye. He was starting to wonder if his information had been wrong.  
  
Then came a crack from off to the left, and another, and another, and another, before Harry could move in the direction of the first. Then several more cracks came from the right. Harry cursed softly. He’d lost count, and that was never a good thing.  
  
 _Well, yes. So my information was right. But maybe I shouldn’t have thought I could take on this many Dragons alone._  
  
Harry gave a sharp yank to his own hair. His mind was wandering off down useless paths, and he wanted to prevent that from happening. Whether he should have done it or not, he was here now, and alone.  
  
He remained hidden as he watched the Dragon’s Hoarders advance on the wrought-iron gates. All of them had their wands drawn, and their red-and-gold flame masks across their faces. Harry grimaced when he saw them. Unlike the white masks the Death Eaters had used, these would cling and obscure the face, and they had a Sticking Charm on them that could only be removed by the caster. Harry had never yet managed to identify any member of the thieves’ ring that he hadn’t captured—and  _they_ were all under vows to never reveal anything about any of the other members.  
  
“Remember the plan,” said the leader, in a muffled voice that Harry couldn’t identify from this distance. And the others nodded. Harry held back his curses. Unlike some other villains he’d chased, they never revealed their plans aloud. They always made them first and  _then_ went and implemented them.  
  
So he wouldn’t know what they were about to do. Well. Advancing on the gates with wands drawn implied a limited number of things. Yes, they  _might_ be about to execute something subtle and brilliant, but he really doubted it. He thought it more likely they would apply brute force to hammer the wards down. It was one reason they had brought—he counted, quickly—nine wizards.  
  
Harry half-closed his eyes. He didn’t know a lot of magic that would bring down that many people, and some of what he did know, he had promised Hermione and Kingsley never to use again.  
  
But he was the only Auror here, or who would be coming. The major downside of being good at solving cases was that there were people who would only contact  _him_  when they decided to betray allies or people they knew, and so he was the only one who had got the anonymous owl that declared an attack would happen on Malfoy Manor this afternoon to steal the Glass of Heart’s Desire.  
  
Harry had got the message less than ten minutes before the attack was supposed to begin. He had sent his Patronus to Ron with the news, and then he’d had to leave immediately, in a long series of jumps to get him as close to the Manor as possible. He didn’t remember what it looked like well enough to Apparate to the gates.  
  
So other Aurors  _might_ show up, but not until the excitement was over, likely.  
  
And he had to do something  _now_.  
  
The leader had halted in the middle of a crescent of four other wizards. The remaining four aligned behind him, in a crescent bent the opposite way, leaving a blank place where the counterpart of the leader would have stood.  
  
 _Shit._ If Harry was right, they were using the Labrys Formation, and that would not only bring down the wards and the gates but quite possibly destroy the walls of the Manor, and everything in the building that wasn’t a magical artifact. Including the people inside, of course.  
  
Harry pointed his wand at the stretch of grass and gravel in between the two halves of the Formation. Ignoring the way they were chanting, he concentrated as hard as he could on the spell he wanted, whispering the words beneath his breath to avoid alerting his enemies. “ _Motus terrae minor_.”  
  
The ground between the two halves of the Formation began to shake just as they started to soar towards the climax of their combined spell. Harry felt himself shaken out of hiding, but he had anticipated that and had already started to roll, in case one of the Dragons had reflexes keen enough to cast at any motion out of place. But it didn’t seem they did. They were tumbling to the ground and losing their wands, but not their masks, as the tiny earthquake shed them like leaves.  
  
Harry immediately Summoned the wands of the four Dragons who had dropped them and Stunned them in response.   
  
Then the leader focused on him and cast a curse that would have moved Harry’s brain outside his skull if it had landed, and he was too busy defending himself to worry about catching any more of them.  
  
*  
  
“ _Shit_.”  
  
Severus leaned over Draco’s shoulder. Draco had shown a newfound interest in mirrors long before he had uncovered the Glass of Heart’s Desire in his family’s vaults; he had, in Severus’s private opinion, been trying to create a variety of enchanted mirror that would give him tips on how to improve his appearance. But the obsession had produced a few good side-effects, like the mirror that hung on the wall of Draco’s dining room and allowed him to observe the front gates.  
  
Before those gates, a group of wizards tangled. Severus tried to observe their distinguishing marks, but they were moving too fast and the image was too small.   
  
Then he saw what had more than likely inspired Draco’s ire: the clump of wild black hair on the head of the Manor’s defender.  
  
“You were not the one who told Harry Potter that we expected an attack, are you, Draco?” Severus asked in interest, making sure to sound mild and distant even as his gut clenched. To have Harry Potter die on the grounds of Malfoy Manor would draw a great deal of attention, even more than having the Glass in the place already did. And it would disrupt the delicate preparations that Severus and Draco were in the middle of making.  
  
“No, I wasn’t,” Draco said, short. “I counted on the wards to protect us long enough for us to get through this first ritual, at least.” He spun around in his chair and stared up at Severus. “What should we do?”  
  
The tone in his voice, whiny though it was, calmed Severus somewhat. This was the Draco who needed him, the Draco he remembered from his days as a professor. Severus had rarely  _enjoyed_ having someone depending on him, but at least he remembered what it was like to have it happen.  
  
“We should make sure that Potter does not cause a scandal when he meant to save us,” he said. “We should take some part in the battle.”  
  
Draco made a noise of distress and reached one hand out to him. “But…the care that you’ve taken to disguise your presence…”  
  
Severus shrugged. “If we do not dispatch the attackers, then they would find out. I would rather have only one person know, one who would probably feel that he owes us enough debts to remain quiet about it.”  
  
Draco nodded and stood up. Severus eyed him. He had become proud of him in the last few years, at least of the intense young man that Draco had become since the war. He picked up his cloak now, the one impregnated with several Dark protection charms that Severus had taught him, and swung it around his shoulders before nodding again to Severus.  
  
“Shall we?”  
  
*  
  
Harry stumbled backwards. That last curse hadn’t hit him full on, or he would be blind, but it had made dozens of flashing lights invade his vision, and he needed a moment to recover.  
  
He knew it was a moment that the leader of the Dragons wouldn’t give him. She was pressing fiercely forwards, and Harry thought it might be Mirabella Honeylender herself behind the mask, or at least someone equivalent in talent and power to the Auror who had disappeared while investigating the Dragon’s Hoarders a year ago.  
  
So Harry bowed his head, his eyes still shut, and cast another of those spells he had promised Hermione and Kingsley he wouldn’t use again. This one unfolded in front of him as a series of whip-like marks on the air, bright red and spreading rapidly. They resembled netting, and they were bright enough that it wasn’t Harry’s fault if one of the Dragons chose to cross them.  
  
Sure enough, he heard one person shriek and the shouted warning of the Dragon leader. If she wasn’t Honeylender, Harry thought grimly, holding his wand to his eyes, she had the auditory glamour that would make her  _sound_ like Honeylender down pat.  
  
He swiftly whispered the countercurse for the spell that was making him blind, and stood up in a second with his hand ready for another round.  
  
The red fence in front of him was holding, for the moment. The Dragon who had crossed it, or tried, was being supported by two of his comrades, his head dangling. Harry watched for a moment, and nodded as he realized the fool was still breathing. No thanks to the bright red mark that zigzagged down his face, barely sparing his eyes and nearly carving his nose in half. If he had persisted, then the mark would have cut him all the way in half.  
  
The Dragon leader studied Harry with eyes too deepset in the mask for Harry to see their color. “You play with Dark magic,” she remarked when she seemed confident that she had Harry’s attention. Her thick red-brown hair, clustered behind the mask, swayed as she stalked a step towards him.  
  
Harry would waste breath if he answered, especially as he saw no particular reason why he  _should_. He watched her in turn, and she turned and whispered something he couldn’t hear to the one Dragon behind her who wasn’t helping support the hurt one or lying Stunned on the ground.  
  
That one nodded and backed away, keeping such a direct gaze and wand on Harry that he didn’t dare attack. In a few complicated moves of his wand, the Stunned Dragons were arrayed around him, and he bent down, clutching the arm of the nearest. They vanished. Side-Along Apparition, Harry was sure. That Dragon would probably come back and retrieve the others.  
  
Harry faced the leader head-on. He still said nothing, but she murmured, “You know that we will retreat from this and return stronger.”  
  
“I don’t know about that,” said a thoughtful voice from behind her.  
  
Harry whipped his gaze around. Silent Apparition. He hadn’t known Malfoy was a master of that. Yet there he stood, beyond the Dragons, his arms folded and his eyebrows raised. A grey cloak with the shimmer of powerful magic on it swirled around him. One of the Dragons reflexively hurled a curse at him, and the cloak reflected it nearly as well as a Shield Charm would have. The fool had to dodge.  
  
“I don’t know that you’ll retreat at all,” Malfoy continued, and pulled his hawthorn wand out. Harry felt inexplicably cheered by the sight of it. It was a reminder that, after all, he had allies, and magic that was on his side. Malfoy aimed it between the leader’s eyes, smiling sweetly all the while. “Not if we encircle you.”  
  
The Dragon darted towards Harry, suddenly, as though she was really going to cross his protective red spell. Harry recoiled instinctively, and she flicked a Dissipater at the fence. Harry had seen the spell before, but not performed on Dark magic so powerful, and he didn’t think it would work—  
  
It did. The fence parted, and she was right there in front of him, so close that her foot was lashing up to kick the wand out of his hand. Harry was reacting, dodging to the side, but he knew already that he would be too slow, and the other Dragons were flowing towards Malfoy. He would be too occupied to help.  
  
“ _Expelliarmus_ ,” said a voice Harry had only heard in dreams for the past seven years.  
  
The Dragon lost her wand in a splinter of sparks. She cried out and tried to make contact with Harry’s hand anyway, although being Disarmed had thrown her off-balance. Harry sprang on her and bore her to the ground.  
  
There was a moment of breathless kicking and punching, and Harry tried to reach for his wand, only to have the Dragon catch his wrist and squeeze. He would drop it, he thought. He could already feel his wrist going numb.  
  
He lowered his head and butted it straight forwards, catching the Dragon’s nose on the top of his skull.  
  
She screamed, much louder than Harry thought a broken nose was really worth, and rolled her head to the side. Harry scrambled up so he was astride her body and Stunned her. If it was Honeylender, then they had been hunting her for months. He wasn’t about to chance her getting away.  
  
He turned to the left first, to Malfoy. He wanted to speak to Snape, because it was him, it  _had_ to be him, but the only Dragons left near them were all lying senseless on the ground. Malfoy was in more danger than Snape.  
  
And it seemed that both of the Dragons who had been supporting the one hit by Harry’s curse were attacking Malfoy now. He was retreating, using Shield Charms wisely, but he wasn’t a match for two experienced duelers hitting him at once. As Harry watched, one of his Shield Charms blew apart and left him wide open.  
  
Harry attacked without hesitation, spinning out a Lashing Charm that conjured a rope near the two Dragons, with a loop for each of their right feet. Then all he had to do was pull hard, and the both of them crashed to the ground.  
  
Malfoy stood breathing for a second, staring at him. Harry raised a weary hand, and would have Stunned the two Dragons now sprawled on the earth, but Snape got there before him, sticking a very familiar wand over Harry’s shoulder and calmly doing it for him. He bound them, as well, and a second later, he was doing the same thing to the Dragons that were still there.  
  
Harry closed his eyes and swallowed. Two of the group had got away, but he had seven, a much better haul than he had expected.  
  
And the leader…  
  
He reached out and cast the spells to haul the mask off her face, and then swore softly. Yes, it was Honeylender. That was going to mean a lot of questions from the Ministry about exactly what this meant, whether Honeylender had been working with the Dragon’s Hoarders all along and had gone back to them when she feared her cover might be compromised, or whether they had somehow managed to persuade her to join them.  
  
And if they could do it to her, who knew what other Aurors they could convert?  
  
“You’re hurt.”  
  
It took Harry a second to realize Snape was addressing him. It seemed so much more likely that he would have been talking to Malfoy, who had presumably sheltered him during the last seven years that he’d been playing dead. But Snape pressed the tip of his wand against Harry’s arm, and Harry looked down.  
  
“Oh, they got lucky,” he said. “Or she did.” Honeylender was the only one he’d thought would stand much of a chance against his dueling skill, since she was also a trained Auror. “I don’t think it’ll scar.”  
  
“It’s bleeding faster than a shallow cut should,” Malfoy said, stepping forwards. The expression on his face had a strange quality, as though he was struggling against laughter and exasperation at the same time. “You came to defend the Glass of Heart’s Desire, Potter?”  
  
“Well, to defend you, more,” Harry said. “The note I got said that the Dragon’s Hoarders wanted the Glass and were determined to do anything to get it. And I think the Labrys Formation they were practicing could have destroyed your wards, and the whole building. It wouldn’t have harmed the artifacts inside, though.”  
  
Malfoy’s face washed of color. “Then it could have killed us.”  
  
Harry nodded. “I think so.”  
  
“We owe you a life-debt, it seems,” said Malfoy, and looked across at Snape. Harry ignored the glance they exchanged. It had some deep and mystical significance, that was clear, but that only made sense. They’d been conspiring together for a while, maybe living together. He was more interested in getting his captives back to the Ministry.  
  
“Sure. We can settle it later, if you want. In the meantime, if you’ll move out of the way so I can get these Dragons back into custody?” He was talking to Snape, who still had his wand positioned on the wound in Harry’s arm.  
  
“You are  _bleeding_ ,” said Snape, his voice every bit as irritated as it used to be when Harry wasn’t paying attention in Potions class. “As the result of a curse that works against the blood’s clotting and means that you could bleed out while in transit. You should not be Apparating with such a wound.”  
  
Harry rolled his eyes at Snape. Just because he was miraculously back to life didn’t mean Harry had to listen to him. “I’ve had worse.”  
  
“Not on my grounds, you haven’t,” said Malfoy, and ignored the glare Harry shot him. Harry had his mouth all open and set on reminding Malfoy of the war, but Malfoy went blithely on. “And in the meantime, you’re going to come with us so that we can actually treat you and pay back part of the life-debt.”  
  
Snape had cast some sort of spell that slowed the bleeding, but he shook his head when Harry turned to him. “That’s the only magic I can do without potions. You’ll have to take one to close it.”  
  
“Fine,” Harry said, drawing out the word and making sure that they saw he was humoring them. Honestly. He had been the one who showed up and saved everyone’s life, but he was the one who had to be treated like a child, for some reason. “But what about my prisoners?”  
  
“They’ll be fine in the cellars until you’re ready to leave,” Malfoy said, stepping forwards to collect the captive Dragons with lazy waves of his wand. “I’m sure you remember what fine dungeons those cellars make.”  
  
Snape was hissing something at Malfoy that Harry frankly didn’t follow. His head was drooping, his eyes blurring. He fought his way to his feet, so that he was at least walking with Snape rather than being dragged on his arm. Stupid bloodletting curse. Maybe Snape was right after all that it wouldn’t be a good idea to Apparate like this.  
  
They limped, or floated, or strode, slowly into the house. Harry didn’t pay much attention to the rooms they took him through. He did know that Malfoy had vanished into the dungeons, and that Snape was saying something to him about potions. Harry nodded agreeably. He reckoned that agreeing with Snape about potions was the fastest way to get the one he needed, and then get out of here. He was a little uncomfortable with their thanks, frankly. He didn’t get a lot of thanks as an Auror, since most of the people he met were either criminals or victims who had better things on their minds than gratitude.  
  
And the thought of Snape and Malfoy indebted to him…well, it was weird. Harry wanted to get away from here. He could think about Snape being alive later, when he had some kind of distance from the attack.  
  
“Drink this.”  
  
Snape almost broke the bottle shoving it into his hand, which Harry decided meant it was worth a swallow. He grasped the rough sides of it and managed to gulp it. For a moment, the liquid lay burning in his throat; then it rushed all the way down, and Harry gasped and swayed, clutching at the sides of the bottle.  
  
The wound did seem to have closed, and he felt more alert. Harry raised his head. They’d come quite far into Malfoy Manor, he realized, into a room that had white walls and a floor that felt like marble. He opened his mouth to ask how long Snape expected him to stay.  
  
Then he caught sight of something on the far side of the room, and stared.  
  
Behind him, as distant as he had sounded when Harry was losing blood by the second, Snape said, “I thought you should at least see what you fought so hard to protect.”  
  
Harry only blinked in acknowledgment. The Glass of Heart’s Desire was exactly the way the papers had reported it to be: a tall mirror, roughly oval, in a frame of blue iron, set with a single sapphire at the top, like an eye. Around the frame wreathed carved and flowing leopards and lions, their tails entwining.  
  
The glass itself was silvery with a blue undertone, and Harry thought for a second it was blank, the way all the papers had also reported it to be. You could see the path to your heart’s desire in it, but you either had to be of the blood of the current owner—a Malfoy, in this case—or undergo a special ritual so that you could see it.  
  
A lazy swirl moved in the glass, and Harry was staring at his own face.   
  
 _Or,_ he remembered abruptly, something the papers had reported almost as a footnote,  _you have to have done a great service for the current owners._  
  
He saw the vision of his face the way a Muggle movie camera would have showed it, moving slowly backwards. He was naked, he saw with a start, and lying on a bed so high and covered with slick green sheets that he wondered he didn’t fall off it. He lay with his chin on his folded arms, his head pointed towards the bottom of the bed, his feet lazily kicking on a pillow. At least he lay on his stomach, a comfort to his burning face.  
  
On the other hand, Snape probably couldn’t see his vision. Harry’s heart’s desire would be private by default, unless someone else happened to share the exact same wish.  
  
Harry wanted to turn his eyes away, but he couldn’t. The room was no place he knew, with high windows and a wide floor that he could have used for dueling practice. The carpet looked like it was some dim color between blue and lavender, and snow flicked past outside the windows. The fireplace in front of him loomed large enough to block out the winter all on its own, and the flames were as red-gold as the Dragons’ masks.  
  
A door opened, and the Harry in the glass turned his head and smiled at someone coming into the room. Harry couldn’t make them out, because this time the vision didn’t move, until they came much closer to the bed. One person was Snape, dressed in black robes, and the other Malfoy, wearing the grey cloak that he’d worn in the battle. Both of them stepped up to Harry, and Malfoy put his hand on Harry’s shoulder while Snape leaned his arm in the middle of Harry’s back. His  _naked_ back, Harry’s mind pointed out helpfully.  
  
All the stupid Harry in the vision did was lower his face into the coverlet and close his eyes, melting into trust, relaxation, acceptance.  
  
Then the vision blurred back into nothingness, and Harry turned his head away, aware that Snape had moved in front of him and was saying something in a concerned tone. Harry shut his eyes and shook his head. “I’m fine,” he said.  
  
 _That’s…that’s not real. It was supposed to show me the path to my heart’s desire, anyway, and there’s no way that that’s a path of any kind. Or a_ thing  _of any kind._  
  
 _Goddamn mirrors._


	2. Odd Behavior

“Potter? Are you all right?”  
  
Draco came slowly into the room he had chosen to contain the mirror, glancing back and forth between Severus and Potter. Potter had seemed fine, other than the loss of blood, when Draco went to put the captured thieves in the cellars. And Draco knew that Severus would have made sure that he got the appropriate potions.   
  
Now, Potter had stopped bleeding, but he looked paler than he had when Draco went down. He was seated on a couch that stood not across from the mirror, although Draco assumed he would have wanted to see it, but off to the side. He buried his face in his hands for a second, then straightened up and looked at Draco.  
  
“I’m fine,” he said, with a strained smile. “Thank you for all your help. I’d say that it’s more than enough to pay the life-debt back.”  
  
“We, or the magic, are the ones who have to say when it’s paid off,” Draco said. “Unless we honestly feel that way, then the debt still exists.” He glanced in concern at Severus. Had they started arguing while Draco was out of the room? But no, it couldn’t be that, or Severus would look more upset than he did.  
  
“Oh.” Potter sat there blankly for a moment, then shrugged and stood up. “Okay. Well, thank you for helping me. I think I need to get back to the Ministry now, but I appreciate it.” He nodded to Severus and Draco and moved out from next to Severus. “Do you mind holding most of the prisoners until I can bring other Aurors back? I want to take the leader with me, since she’s a rogue Auror we’ve been looking to question for a long time, but it would be more convenient to fetch the others later.”  
  
“I want you to tell me what happened,” said Draco. Potter blinked at him. “Oh come, on Potter, I’m not blind. I know that something happened during the time I was gone to make you upset. Or whatever that look on your face really is. What was it?”  
  
Potter closed his eyes and bowed his head. “I—Malfoy, I saw something in the mirror. I didn’t mean to. I didn’t know that protecting your home from thieves would give me the ability to see something in it. But apparently the mirror thought I deserved it.”  
  
Draco nodded slowly. He had thought of that, but he hadn’t known that the mirror would take something like this as proof of the doer’s allegiance to the Malfoy family. “Fine. You didn’t mean to. I accept that. But why are you apologizing to me for seeing it?”  
  
“It was—oh, hell.” Potter turned his head and faced Severus, then glanced at Draco again, then took a step back so he could watch both of them at once. His face was set, and Draco felt some alarm stir, wondering if Potter was about to tell him something appalling.  
  
But all Potter said was, “This concerns both of you, and it’s stupid, but I thought I should tell you, in case it affected—whatever you were going to do with the mirror.” Draco nodded silently, although as far as he knew Potter having seen a vision in the mirror shouldn’t affect the ritual they had been preparing to let Severus see one in it. “I saw a vision of myself on a bed, in a room I didn’t know. I was just lying there, and looking perfectly happy.”  
  
Draco blinked some more, but caught Severus’s eye and forbore to interrupt.  
  
Potter turned and glanced at both of them again. “Then the two of you walked into the room, and walked up to the bed, and put your hands on me. I was naked, and the way I just  _melted_ under your touch—look, it’s obvious what the vision was saying.” He shook his head. “It’s stupid, and I don’t know  _why_ , but that was what I saw.”  
  
Draco stared a little. He had never heard of the visions in the mirror being influenced by the people that the seer was around at the time, but it seemed that that  _must_ be true. Because what other reason would Potter have to see both of them in the glass?  
  
“You are aware that the first vision you see is your heart’s desire, not the way to get there?” Severus murmured, after a pause that seemed to smother them all in folds of velvet.  
  
“That would make more sense, because it didn’t seem to be a  _step_ ,” Potter muttered, and shook his head. “Sorry, it was just strange.” He glanced at Draco. “I hope I didn’t damage your mirror in any way. Thanks again for the help with the Dragon’s Hoarders.” He moved towards the doorway.  
  
“I understand why you might want to leave,” Draco said. He didn’t step into Potter’s path, even though he really wanted to. “But I would like you to stay and discuss this with—us.” A quick glance at Severus let him ascertain that that was what Severus wanted, as well. If nothing else, curiosity burned in the back of Severus’s gaze. “It’s strange, but it might be worth pursuing.”  
  
Potter looked at him in so weird a fashion that Draco thought his vision must be nothing to it, even if there were things happening in it to make it strange that Potter hadn’t told them. “Excuse me,  _what_?” Potter asked, sounding faint. “You think that you might want me naked in a bed sometime?”  
  
“I don’t know,” Draco said. “I never thought about it before. But you never thought about it before now either, did you?”  
  
“Not with you.”  
  
Severus nodded before Draco could speak. “That suggests that the glass did not show that image to you because you have some incredible repressed desire for us.” Potter snorted faintly, but didn’t interrupt. “It showed you that for a different reason instead. We would like to speak to you about that reason.”  
  
Potter turned back and forth between both of them, but he didn’t glance longingly at the doorway. “This is really weird,” he finally settled for muttering.  
  
Draco gave him a sympathetic smile. “I understand if you want to take the Dragon’s Hoarders in, and especially that one you said the Aurors had been searching for. But I also think that you might benefit from coming back.”  
  
Potter bit his lip and stared into the distance with eyes that had gone hard. Draco wondered what he was seeing, but it seemed as impossible to know that as it was to know the full details of his vision in the mirror. Unless he told them.  
  
Finally, Potter nodded. “I do have a report to write and an interrogation to conduct, but I’ll come back. Maybe tomorrow?”  
  
“That would be acceptable,” Draco said, again checking with Severus. Severus arched an eyebrow. Draco nodded back. That would give them enough time to finish conducting the ritual and let Severus see his own vision.  
  
“Most acceptable,” said Severus.  
  
Potter turned back and forth between the two of them for one more moment, then said directly to Severus, “I thought you would be the one who had the most problems with it, but you sound almost enthusiastic. Why?”  
  
Draco waited, curious, both because of Severus’s reply and because of the way Potter had asked that question. He didn’t sound as if he was fishing for compliments. He just sounded completely baffled.  
  
And sometimes, Severus liked them that way.  
  
“Because I want to see what it was,” said Severus. “What sort of vision it is, and where the consequences will lead us.” He added, when Potter only stared at him without seeming convinced, “My life has been hidden for the past seven years, passing from sanctuary to sanctuary until I could find a place in Malfoy Manor. I long for novelty.”  
  
Draco’s sharp eyes didn’t miss the way that Potter relaxed when Severus said that, nodding as if it made sense. “Then I’ll come back,” he said. “Even though I don’t have any idea what it means, and even though I doubt it’ll work out the way you want it to.”  
  
“I am going to use the mirror myself,” Severus replied. “To see how I might gain back some sort of position and standing in society without immediately being arrested. Perhaps that vision will combine with yours and show us some way forwards.”  
  
Potter relaxed further, and nodded. Maybe he was all right as long as they weren’t discussing him lying naked on a bed, Draco decided. “Tomorrow, then.” He nodded to Draco, as if Draco was the one who had saved his life and mirror instead of the other way around, and strode through the doorway. Draco could hear him casting the spells that would Stun and Summon the Hoarder leader, so that he wouldn’t have to go into the cellars.  
  
Severus was still gazing after him. Draco cleared his throat, and Severus turned to him. “Novelty?” Draco asked. “Really?”  
  
“You know me after living with me for the past two years,” Severus said. “You can appreciate the mixture of my motives. Would Potter, if I attempted to explain?”  
  
Draco laughed. “Of course not. But you can do your best to explain to him when he comes back.” He gestured at the mirror and the silver robe that was spread out on the floor. “Now, if you would? Your ritual awaits.”  
  
*  
  
“The instructions say that you need to make the surface of your mind like a mirror, as flat and reflecting…”  
  
Draco droned the words from the book of ritual instructions on using the Glass of Heart’s Desire that Severus had read over and over until his mind ached from the force of repetition. By this point, though, Draco’s voice had lost any of its power to disturb him. Severus could simply let the words slide down the surface of his mind and strengthen his Occlumency so that he could do exactly what the ritual required.  
  
And it was working. He could feel the chill in his own thoughts, the slowness with which they moved, as if they were all becoming frozen into a mirror.  
  
When he was sure that he had as much of the coldness as he needed, he opened his eyes and rose to his feet.  
  
He was wearing the long silver robe that Draco had picked out the cloth for, but which Severus had woven himself—albeit with the aid of subtle spells and Transfigurations rather than his hands. There was obeying ritual necessity, and then there was the lack of skill that would cause the whole endeavor to remain pointless.  
  
In a circle around him burned candles, all of them positioned carefully so that he could see their reflections in the Glass of Heart’s Desire. From here, with his mind glazed and his eyes much the same way, they seemed nothing but a ring of small and glowing stars far away. Severus stepped towards the mirror and reached his hand up.  
  
His fingers came to rest on the blue stone at the top of the frame. It felt as if his hand had floated to that spot of its own free will, as if it was directed. Severus did not fight it, but went on breathing, and gazing.  
  
The image in the mirror came slowly to life, twitching and flashing in several directions as if fighting the will of a greater power.   
  
Severus saw robes first, a confused and circling collection of colorful robes. He blinked. He had wondered how he could be accepted into wizarding society again, but he thought he recognized those robes, and he had had no notion that his heart’s desire might lie through the path of a Ministry ball.  
  
The image continued to coalesce, as if out of silver fog, and the frame trembled and shivered a little. Severus lifted his other hand and curved it beside his eyes, surrounding the image with a frame of his own.  
  
That seemed to help, and the picture steadied. Severus saw himself in red robes—he, who had worn no color other than black or sometimes grey for years—in the middle of the crowd, a relaxed smile on his face. Draco stood on one side of him, in green robes, and leaned near to whisper something into his ear. The mirrored Severus turned his head and regarded Draco with an indulgent smile that the real Severus was fairly sure he had never given.  
  
It was a smile he had  _thought_ about giving, that much was true. He had thought of it many and many a time. When he worked side-by-side with Draco on potions that Draco would sell in his own name, the Malfoy name, reestablishing it and reaping the social rewards but giving Severus the monetary ones. When Draco fell asleep leaning on his shoulder as they labored over ancient texts together. When Draco sprawled in front of the fire and somehow managed to look comfortable while angling his feet up on the hearth.  
  
But he had never done so, because what Draco meant to him and what he was  _allowed_ to mean to Severus were entirely separate things.  
  
But there he was, and there Draco was, and although Severus could not make out what Draco was saying, even by watching the movement of his lips, he knew it would be something irritating and endearing at once, the way so many things about Draco were.   
  
Was this the secret, then? Were he and Draco going to be partners in the fight to establish him socially, and would they be partners in a more intimate way as well?  
  
But although Severus thought the vision should be ending by now—certainly the one that Potter had seen had not lasted this long—it continued. Both the other self and the Draco in the mirror looked up, as though someone had taken them by surprise, and a second later, the figure appeared next to them.  
  
Potter, in stunning green robes a few shades deeper than Draco’s, which made his eyes seem to glow.  
  
Potter didn’t lean near to Severus to share a secret. He seemed fearfully conscious of the crowd around them, although Severus couldn’t take his eyes from the group of three at the center of the image to check if anyone was actually staring at them. His chin and his color were both high.  
  
But he reached out and laid one hand on Severus’s sleeve and one on Draco’s, and those hands did not tremble.  
  
The vision ended, then.   
  
Severus stepped back from the swirl of silver and closed his eyes, massaging his forehead.  _His_  hand trembled. His body seemed to have absorbed the strength of the Severus in the vision, and the weight of his hand on his forehead even seemed strange. He would not have been surprised to find that his brow had been branded with a scar, like Potter’s.  
  
“Severus?” Draco’s voice was close to his ear in reality, too, but he simply seemed concerned, his hand tight on Severus’s shoulder. “Are you all right? I read that the vision can take you like this, sometimes. No wonder Potter looked so shaken.”  
  
“I will be well.” Severus firmed his voice carefully. Draco did not deserve to be so disturbed, not when he had helped Severus so far and so well, and Severus was going to need more from him than even this level of support.  
  
Perhaps that, in the end, was why he could accept the vision so easily, and want Potter to come back tomorrow: because he had already accepted that this could come true, that he could use both of them to climb the social ranks.  
  
There could be other reasons, too. With Draco, there would be. There already were, if Severus was honest enough to admit them to himself.  
  
But with Potter, the reasons would take time to grow. That blush and that bravery when he told them of his vision would be a fine beginning, though.  
  
“Are you going to tell me what your vision was about?” Draco sounded as if he was barely restraining himself from knocking Severus to the floor and climbing all over him to shake the answer out of him.  
  
That image itself was a fine one, Severus thought, and he managed to smile even before he opened his eyes and studied Draco, who looked expectantly at him, cocking his head.   
  
“I saw you and myself at a Ministry ball,” Severus said. “I was wearing red robes.” Draco’s slightly parted lips said that he fully appreciated the nuance, and led Severus’s eyes to them naturally. “And then you leaned in towards me and whispered, and I smiled at you, in a way that made it clear that we had become lovers.”  
  
Draco’s eyes flared at him. He made no movement to step closer or glide away, and Severus could read his eager interest in his quickened breath.  
  
“But that can’t have been the whole thing,” Draco said at last. “You looked stunned, the way Potter did—” He stopped. “Potter was there, too?”  
  
Severus nodded, glad that Draco had caught it, proud that he had, indulgent again in that special way he so often was around Draco. “And he came up to us as if he wanted to be away from there, but also as if he was daring people to disapprove. And from the way he looked at the both of us, it was the both of us he wanted.”  
  
“So, not a matter of you taking multiple lovers to climb up the social scale, then,” Draco mumbled. “Not with that and his vision, too.”  
  
Severus reached out and took his hand. “It would not matter how appealing Potter was,” he said. “Perhaps, even, my vision was influenced by his. But I would not leave you behind, Draco, and I would not choose him over you.”  
  
Draco looked at him as though he was going to pull out a shard of the mirror and plunge it into Severus’s face. Severus dropped his hand and stepped back. He did not know what he had said to make Draco react that way, but it was at least clear that he had fundamentally misread what Draco desired from him.  
  
“No! I just. Sorry. I mean…” Draco followed him, quickly, and clasped his hand. “I never expected to hear you say that to me,” he continued, in a lower voice. “I was startled, that’s all.”  
  
Severus wanted to retort that he knew what startled looked like on Draco and it wasn’t that, but he had to admit that he hadn’t ever said something like that to Draco before. “Very well. Then you’ll think about it?”  
  
“I already helped you to prepare the ritual and the vision in the glass, didn’t I?” Draco squeezed Severus’s hand. “I wouldn’t step back now.”  
  
“If that is the only reason that you are thinking about being part of this vision, then I beg you to refrain.” Severus knew his voice had grown haughty, but he didn’t think it was something he needed to apologize for. “I will make it on my own. I did not wish to interrupt—”  
  
“Oh, come  _on_ , Severus.” Draco took both his hands now and looked into his eyes. “I didn’t mean that I would only become your lover to help you climb up the social ladder. Neither of us are built that way.” He hesitated, then continued. “I didn’t see any need to talk about it when I thought we both understood it, but—it’s not like our alliance in the past few years has only been for money and political support, has it? Even though it meant that we both got those things, too.”  
  
Severus fought back the smile that wanted to burst across his face. He thought Draco, right now, would misunderstand it as much as Severus had misunderstood his earlier expression. He inclined his head. “Then you support my idea that we should tell Potter when he returns tomorrow?”  
  
“Absolutely,” Draco said, and squeezed Severus’s hands with a strength that pushed his own calluses from Potions stirring rod and cauldron and explosion into Severus’s. “I’ll wager that his face will look worse than mine, anyway.”  
  
*  
  
“They promised me that I would have more gold than I knew what to do with.” Honeylender was murmuring the words, her head leaned back and her eyes sometimes glazed and sometimes closed as she looked at the ceiling. “They promised me that everyone would know my name, not as just one of the Aurors but as a leader. I wanted that. I wanted that more than you can imagine.”  
  
Harry winced a little, but managed to conceal his distaste when Ursula Glinter looked at him. She was the Unspeakable who had invented the Dreamtalk Potion that Honeylender was under at the moment. Veritaserum didn’t suffice to get around the oaths the Dragon’s Hoarders bound their members with, but this potion made the drinker think they were talking to someone they trusted in a safe and secure environment.  
  
Harry understood the need for it, especially when the Dragon’s Hoarders were so successful. He just didn’t like seeing the weird, glazed look that it brought to a drinker’s features.  
  
Ron moved across the room. Harry looked at him. Ron raised an eyebrow and glanced at the door that led out into the corridor.  
  
Harry nodded gratefully and escaped with him. As long as one person was present to ask the questions and provide the memories that would be placed in a Pensieve later, it didn’t matter if it was him. Harry had already gone through his own interrogation about what had happened and how he had captured Honeylender, and he had told everything about Malfoy’s help, too—although not about Snape’s, and not about the Glass of Heart’s Desire.  
  
“I can see that you’re shaken,” Ron said quietly as he led Harry towards their own office. “What happened? I’m so sorry that I couldn’t come right away, but your Patronus got stopped by those wards that they have on the interview rooms now to stop any kind of message coming in.”  
  
Harry nodded grimly. He had forgotten. Ron had been part of a large group of Aurors working together on the last major case, that of a Dark wizard who favored murder curses and had been gathering and teaching students, and while they had captured the wizard himself, several of his students had escaped. Ron and the others had had to go in for questioning about what they had done to make the raid fail and what they could have done better. After interruptions by Patronuses and firecalls and God knew what else, the senior Aurors had finally declared the interview rooms absolutely off-limits when they were being used.   
  
“It’s okay,” he said. “Someone else came out to help me.” Instinctively, he raised a ward against eavesdropping around them. “Snape is with Malfoy.”  
  
Ron’s mouth fell softly open, and he nodded. “Well, you and Hermione were right about him still being alive, then.” He paused and studied Harry. “Is that all? I mean, I know it’s big, mate, but you’re practically shaking.”  
  
Harry swore. He supposed he could be glad that Ron had noticed before some member of the press did and another scandalous story whipped up, but he was still embarrassed. “Time for glamours, then.” He cast a few that he hoped would conceal the pallor of his face.  
  
“Well?”  
  
Harry sighed. “Malfoy has that bloody mirror, and you know how the articles about it said that you could see a vision in it if you’d done a service for the members of the owner’s family?” When Ron nodded, Harry made a disgusted sound. “Malfoy declared that he owed me another life-debt, and the mirror took that as a go-ahead to show me this vision.”  
  
Ron choked a little, and stared at him. “What did the vision show?”  
  
Harry hoped he didn’t flush, or that his glamours might hide it if he did. “That’s the odd thing. I’m going back tomorrow to talk about it with Snape and Malfoy.”  
  
Ron paused, obviously hoping that Harry would share a little more, and then sighed and shrugged when Harry remained silent. “All right. Just tell me when you’re ready.”  
  
 _I’m not sure I ever will be,_ Harry thought. He supposed he might have to tell Ron if it came true, but…  
  
 _How could they possibly want it to be true?_


	3. An Intimidating Visit

Harry Apparated in front of the gates to Malfoy Manor, looking at them doubtfully. The last time he had been here, he had gone through them escorted by their master. He had no idea what he was supposed to do now that he was an invited guest, but not actually being dragged bleeding into the house. Knock?  
  
He didn’t have that long to conjecture. The gates swung open so slowly and majestically that Harry felt himself twitch. He stepped equally slowly onto the gravel path inside them, looking around for some sign of the spells or even machines that performed that trick. Malfoy had changed a lot in the last few years. Harry wouldn’t put using a certain kind of Muggle trick past him.  
  
But Malfoy didn’t appear to have used anything except magic that was probably embedded in the wards. Those kept right on humming merrily, and Harry sighed and trod on up the gravel path towards the house.  
  
The path curved and bent a few times, but no traps tried to snatch his feet, and a house-elf opened the door, bowing low. “Master Harry Potter is coming this way?” it squeaked, and gestured down a broad corridor Harry hadn’t seen before. Then again, the last time he’d come this way he’d almost been slung over Snape’s shoulder and bleeding a lot. He shouldn’t trust his memories.  
  
Carpet thick enough to sound like snowfall under his feet didn’t reassure Harry much, either. He squared his shoulders, though. He’d been into his share of pure-blood houses by now to interview victims, and talk to witnesses, and sometimes to arrest criminals. He wasn’t going to let even the overblown splendor of Malfoy Manor get to him.  
  
Although, to be fair, he’d never entered a place like this with the intention of sleeping with its owner.  
  
A horrible blush worked its way over Harry’s face, and he hadn’t managed to quell it—even by reminding himself that he didn’t know what the vision meant, but possibly the Glass of Heart’s Desire used symbolic representations and that kind of thing, so possibly his heart’s desire was the sort of vulnerability and dependence he had seen in the mirror, not actually sleeping with Malfoy and Snape—when Malfoy popped around the corner. Harry came to a halt, rocking a little. Malfoy wore almost casual robes, long and sheer silver, embroidered with what looked like gamboling dragons.  
  
Harry almost snorted when he realized the dragons were stitched in green thread and had tiny little silver flakes for eyes. At least some things didn’t change, no matter how the Malfoy might shed his skin.  
  
“Auror Potter! Welcome.” Malfoy came forwards, closer than Harry had thought he would, and reached out a hand. Harry finally realized that he wanted to shake hands, and did so. Malfoy’s fingers were warm and thin and strong. “Severus is in the next room. Shall we go?”  
  
Harry considered saying, “No!” and running out of the house, even though he knew that wouldn’t actually solve the problem. He managed to nod and, he hoped, not look like he was being condemned to death by light conversation. He followed Malfoy out of the corridor into what was apparently the “next room,” although Harry wondered why Malfoy called it that, since they’d passed several doors.  
  
This one was a beautiful room, and at least it had no bloody life-changing mirror against the far wall. It was decorated in tones of light blue and gold, so that Harry found himself relaxing before he realized why. There was a fireplace in one corner, looming rather, but unlit, and Malfoy steered him towards the circle of chairs in the middle of the room. To one side of the circle was a couch that looked as comfortable as a bed; Snape was stretched out on that, reading.  
  
 _Do not think of beds and Snape in the same sentence!_ Harry ordered himself sternly.  
  
It didn’t make much difference, though, because the person he hadn’t thought of was behind him, guiding him to sit down on the nearest chair. His eyes all but shone, and Harry knew from one glance at him that Malfoy’s soft brush against his shoulder had been deliberate.  
  
 _I don’t know how to do this!  
  
_ But Harry had, by necessity, learned to do lots of things that he didn't know how to do since taking on the job as an Auror. He sat down and accepted a glass of pale, chill juice from Malfoy that looked as if it was squeezed from glass grapes. He had no idea what it actually was. Maybe even wine, if the smoothness of it was any indication. He took a long swallow and glanced again at Snape.  
  
Who, unnervingly, had closed his book entirely and focused on Harry.  
  
Harry drank some more. He might have to do this, but one thing was certain, that he had too dry a throat to continue the conversation right now.  
  
"We were waiting for you to begin," Malfoy said wryly, when a few minutes had elapsed and no one had said anything.  
  
Harry started and nodded putting down the glass. Maybe the drink had contained a few strengthening properties as well. God knew that he shouldn't put anything past a house full of Potions masters. "Sorry," he murmured. "I haven't done this before. I mean, had a vision like this before, or talked to people that the vision shows me sleeping with." Nervously, he ran a hand through his hair. Hermione would scold him for that, but Hermione wasn't here. "If that's even what the vision means. I suppose it could just mean that I'm going to come to trust you a lot?"  
  
"It might mean that," said Snape, with a depth to his voice that Harry had never heard before. Nervously, Harry glanced at him and found Snape focused on his face, his eyes dark and glistening. "But I had another vision in the mirror, one that intrigued me greatly, but could not be interpreted in many different ways."  
  
Harry bit his lip. "A vision of us in bed?" His voice shook, and he reached for the glass again. There was nothing much left in it, but at least he could swirl the liquid around and hide his mouth.  
  
"No," said Snape. "At a Ministry party, and from the way I smiled at Draco, and at you when you came up to me, we were already lovers."  
  
Harry eyed him. Snape didn't appear to be joking. Harry looked back at Malfoy, who was calmly sipping his drink and didn't seem jealous. Harry cleared his throat. "So...were you already interested in each other?"  
  
"Why would you say that?" Malfoy's voice was soft and polite, and he was toying with the stem of his glass, not looking at Harry.  
  
"Well, I mean, I don't think Snape's heart's desire could be to sleep with both of us," Harry said. "But you, maybe, and then I came along and..." He stared towards the wall that he thought separated them from the mirror, which he could practically feel crouching there like a huge beast. "Could someone's previous vision influence the vision that someone else has?"  
  
"No." Malfoy put his drink down and focused on Harry this time, with disturbing intensity. "Severus wants to return to society, and I thought at first that having you as a lover would aid in that happening. But he has reassured me that he would not climb a social ladder merely by having a socially prominent lover. I know that you don't have as much reason to believe him as I do, but please do so."  
  
That was all but an order, Harry thought, and the realization popped out of his mouth before he could stop himself. "You like giving orders, don't you?"  
  
Malfoy didn't flinch or back away or even blush. "Depending on whether the vision you saw and described was accurate, I think it's highly likely that you like _taking_ them."  
  
Scarlet flooded Harry's face and vision. He looked away from Malfoy and towards the door. "This was a mistake. I shouldn't have come here."  
  
"I didn't mean anything demeaning by it." Malfoy sounded the same as before, unbothered. "What I mean is that you might be comfortable shucking off that mantle of Auror authority you wear occasionally, and lying back, and letting someone else do the work."  
  
" _Occasionally_ ," Harry said, turning back around. "That doesn't mean that every afternoon in bed would look like my vision did!"  
  
Malfoy only half-smiled, and Harry realized what he had admitted in denying part of Malfoy's assertion. He cursed softly under his breath and turned to Snape.  
  
"Look, don't you think this is a bit much?" he asked. "Strange, even? You might have a vision that includes me, I might have one that includes you, and it isn't that strange that Malfoy would show up in both of them. But for all of us three to be together--that doesn't strike you as strange?"  
  
"It strikes me as something that could go along with my heart's desire," Snape said. He didn't have the same absolutely calm look as Malfoy, but he wasn't bouncing up and down with indignation to deny what Harry was saying, either. "And while I have been patient, I am done with being so. I want to emerge and live my life in the eyes of day. I wish society to acknowledge me. I wish to be happy." He paused. "The Glass of Heart's Desire can sense all of one's desires and give the path to the strongest one. If you are part of what I need to be happy, then I do not wish to yield you, no."  
  
Harry could feel a strong, warm tide moving in him. He shook his head. That probably just came from feeling wanted by a man he had admired, desperately, after he was dead.  
  
"But it would be a lot of fucking work," he said. Malfoy snickered. Harry turned to him. Snape was too serious. If Malfoy could still laugh, maybe he could see some funny sides to the arrangement. "I mean, really. Do you want this? What is _your_ heart's desire? Do you really want the same things we do?"  
  
"I don't know," Malfoy said, and stood up. "But the current owner of the Glass can look into it without the need of risking his life or performing a ritual. Shall we go and see?"  
  
Harry opened his mouth. Then he closed it. He wasn't personally familiar with this new, decisive Malfoy, but he really thought he should be, since it was the Malfoy who had been selling potions and reestablishing his reputation in the papers for the past five years.  
  
"All right," Harry muttered, and stood up. He looked at Snape, wondering if he was coming along, wondering if the two of them would want to be left alone. They had to share a lot of memories. They had been alone when Snape looked into the mirror.  
  
But Snape's mouth was curved in a faint smile, and while he had stood up, he made a bow that indicated Harry should go ahead of him.  
  
Harry lifted his head. If he was really to become their lover, if this was part of his heart's desire in a way he couldn't see right now but which the mirror had found out, then he didn't want to act nervous and timid in front of them.  
  
And if it didn't end up working out after all, then showing fear in front of two people who used to despise him was something he didn't want to do for his own reasons.  
  
He managed to follow Malfoy and precede Snape out of the room without very much trembling.  
  
*  
  
Honestly, this close to a Potter who was more nervous than Draco had ever expected, Draco could see where some of Severus's attraction came from.  
  
 _It would be nice to see him trust us. To learn what sort of desire he needs to blossom instead of acting like he doesn't know what to do next._  
  
Draco ducked his head to hide his smile. Potter might think it was mocking if he saw it, instead of what Draco really meant by it, which was that Potter was as fascinating as ever, and Draco wanted to see what he looked like when he was self-confident and happy in someone else's presence. Draco had seen more than enough of what he looked like when he was upset.  
  
 _But I can't really influence the mirror when I don't even know for sure what my strongest heart's desire is,_ he reminded himself.  
  
He turned into the room with the Glass, curious, and doing his best not to show it. He had thought that one of his strongest desires was to see Severus reestablish himself, but the Glass seemed to show more than that, and it would always show the _actual_ strongest desire, rather than the one the person watching the vision had told themselves they most wanted. Draco thought that was probably part of the reason that his ancestors had shut the bloody thing away in their vaults. It could be dangerous, could disrupt good arrangements, could make people face their hearts who had a constitutional dislike of doing so.  
  
Maybe this would be good for him, in some undefined way. Draco _wanted_ a more defined good, with Severus and even Potter involved, but he'd have to see.  
  
He stepped up to the mirror and rested his hand on the glowing blue stone at the top of the frame. For a moment, it sparked, as if tasting his skin and recognizing in him the blood of a Malfoy. It was the most recognition Draco had got out of the mirror so far.  
  
Then lazy colors swirled in the middle of the glass and came together bleeding from the sides. Draco held his breath as he watched them. Maybe they would reveal the same vision of the Ministry party and the brilliant robes that Severus had seen. That would _prove_ that he and Draco wanted the same things, and create a bond between them that it was harder to break.  
  
But instead, the colors formed a room that Draco knew, deep in the Manor, although he seldom used it. The walls were blue, the carpets white, the windows framed with pale blue jewels, and Draco's taste ran a different way. He rarely entertained people there, and cast some glamour spells when he had to.  
  
Now, though, he saw those colors, and himself in pale grey robes, sitting on a couch in a corner, watching something on a different couch with a smile. That scene on the other couch took a long time to form, as though the mirror was searching his heart for what he'd most like to see.  
  
When it did coalesce, Draco took a long, deep swallow of air. It was Severus, in black robes, attempting to crane his head so that he could see a large, crumbling red tome the right way. He couldn't just hold it up in front of himself because Potter was asleep on his shoulder, his mouth open, adding a tone of pink to the scene. He was in green robes himself, and snoring.  
  
Severus gave the image of Draco a martyred look. The Draco in the mirror only smiled more widely, and then got up to saunter across the room, bending down to kiss Severus on the mouth, Potter on the cheek.  
  
Potter stirred to wakefulness and stared up at Draco with a bleary look for a moment. Then he smiled.  
  
And a smile of trust was as precious as the martyred expression on Severus's face, or the satisfied one that his image wore now, reaching out to stroke Draco with one hand and Potter with the other. The book fell unnoticed in his lap, which Draco knew would never happen as things stood.  
  
Then the vision winked out like a star dying, and Draco took a deep breath and turned away from the Glass.  
  
"What did you see?" Potter demanded, leaning forwards on his toes, all but quivering.  
  
"Something I want to tell you both about at once," Draco said, then started a little when he realized Severus stood there, too. It was the first time in their years of living together that Draco had failed to sense immediately when Severus was in a room.  
  
Severus gave him a calm smile and said, "Yes, I appreciate that sentiment. But we are both here now, so you can tell us."  
  
Draco shook himself a little and stood upright. "I saw us sitting in a room in the Manor that I don't often use now." He put aside his worries about the color scheme. Maybe he would learn to like it because his partners liked it. Maybe he was only sitting in there under protest, and he would insist that Severus and Potter indulge him later. That sounded more like him. "You were reading a book, Severus, and Potter was asleep on your shoulder. He woke up when I crossed over to kiss him, and you." He looked at Potter. Yes, he was blushing again. Draco hadn't got tired of the blush yet, but he _was_ hungry to see the sort of expression his future self would be able to make appear on Potter's face with ease. "He trusted me."  
  
"You could tell that just from the way I reacted?" Potter's voice was thin and high, and he reached up to rub his hand over his face, as if to rub away what Draco was saying.  
  
Draco inclined his head. "Of course I could. I don't think that you would wake that easily in a room with people you didn't trust. You have those instincts from the war as well as from your Auror training, don't you?"  
  
Potter paused. Then he said, "Good point."  
  
"And I know that _I_ was feeling happy and loved," Draco pursued, in a kind of wonder that he didn't mind them seeing. He had never thought he would feel those particular emotions to that depth, although he had hoped to maintain his friendship with Severus for years, and marry someone he could like. "So that's the deepest desire of my heart. To have people I can relax around. I mean, _utterly_ relax around," he added, seeing Severus's eyebrows rise, and knowing that he was probably thinking of the times Draco had fallen asleep over their research.  
  
"I had thought you had done that more than once before in the past," Severus murmured. "When you laid your head on the couch where I sat and went to sleep."  
  
Draco grinned. It had taken Severus _days_ to recover from the evidence that someone trusted him that much. From the corner of his eye, he saw Potter observing them both as if they were mad, and that only made his grin widen.  
  
"But I didn't know that you wouldn't take it badly, so I didn't do it as often as I wanted to," he explained, which made Severus roll his eyes. But _indulgently,_ that was the point, so Draco dared to persist. "Now that I know it's possible, and that I might have more than one person I could share that with, of course I want it."  
  
He turned to Potter. "That's sort of the way your vision went, isn't it? You saw yourself on a bed in a room you didn't know, but you did know the two of us, and you did know that you had relaxed enough around us to entrust yourself to us."  
  
Potter hesitated for so long that Draco thought he might need a fork to pry the bastard's mouth open. But then he nodded, and some of the vivid color left his face. "What about Snape's vision at the party, though? I don't know that it was about trust."  
  
"If you knew what it would take for me to _smile_ at someone in a setting like a Ministry party," Severus murmured, "then you would not say that."  
  
Potter's lips hardened a little. "I don't know enough about you to say that, though. I don't know that I ever _will_ know enough about you for something like that." He glanced sideways at Draco. "Do you really think that a desire for trust is enough to link us together?"  
  
"Well, obviously, we desire different kinds of trust," Draco pointed out, as kindly as he could. "The mirror isn't showing us all the similarities. But it is showing that our heart's desires could be fulfilled through each other."  
  
"Then I didn't secretly want to be with you all along," Potter said, frowning as if the concept was difficult for him to grasp. Draco smoothed away the impulse to make fun of him for his slowness. That was hardly the way to encourage Potter to trust him. "I wanted to be with people you could trust, and you're two people who could fit into that desire."  
  
Draco nodded, careful not to take his eyes from Potter's. "Exactly. You might have found someone else who could fit the bill. Or two other people. But we're here, and our visions mesh with yours. I think that we'd be foolish at least not to explore the possibilities." He glanced at Severus to see what he thought.  
  
"I think the Glass will be necessary to show us the first steps on the path," said Severus, but he was nodding in a way that Draco recognized from moments when he had got a potion right, against all expectations. "It can do that, I believe? Show the heart's desire and then show us the appropriate steps to get there?"  
  
"Yes," Draco said. "And now that all of us have had a vision in the mirror, we shouldn't need to go through another ritual or life-saving experience to have some more." He turned towards Potter, smiling at him. "Do you want to look again?"  
  
Potter gave him a sharp look. "In some ways, I would rather fight off rabid hyenas. At least they don't know magic."  
  
Draco cupped a hand around his ear. "I thought I heard you say 'in _some_ ways.'" Gentle teasing could be all right, he thought, as long as it served a purpose.  
  
"Watch it, Malfoy," Potter said, but it wasn't said sharply. He stepped up, put a hand on Draco's shoulder, and then pushed him, gently, out of the way, so that he could look into the mirror.  
  
Draco moved aside, well-pleased. He had no idea what Potter might see this time, but he was almost sure of one thing: it wouldn't involve Potter leaving them behind.  
  
*  
  
Harry gulped down some sustaining air as he faced the Glass. He found that one of his hands was trembling, and closed it down immediately. The last thing he needed was for Malfoy and Snape to witness _that_.   
  
Even if he no longer thought they would turn against him, or even make fun of him for it.  
  
Harry lifted his head and looked into the Glass's surface.  
  
For a second, it rippled placidly, and Harry began to wonder if this was going to be worse than useless. Maybe the Glass did only show one vision. Perhaps it assumed that Harry knew all the steps to his heart's desire and didn't need any more guidance. Harry squinted at it and tried, silently, to command it to show him something. Because of course he _did_ need guidance, and he didn't know what to expect, and he wanted...  
  
 _You want to have even more to do with Snape and Malfoy than you already do?_  
  
Harry sucked in a startled breath, having to accept that the Glass hadn't been as far off the beaten path as he had thought, and the placid surface rippled again and dissolved, as if Harry was diving into clear water.  
  
What he saw there made his cheeks burn the way they hadn't since he stepped into the Manor, and he whipped away from the Glass, dropping his head into his hands. He could feel Snape and Malfoy silently trying to command him to look up, but he didn't care. _They_ weren't the ones who had just received a shock.  
  
"Potter?" Malfoy ventured.  
  
Harry swallowed and made himself look up. "I suppose I should have expected that," he said. Malfoy leaned forwards, almost quivering, and Snape waited beyond him, still but no less curious.  
  
"A kiss, all right?" Harry finally said, when he knew that he would die of embarrassment either way, and it was less embarrassing just to _say_ it. "That's what the bloody mirror thinks would be a good first step."  
  



	4. Burning Cheeks

Draco shivered. The look on Potter’s face, the way he met Draco’s eyes and then turned away, his clenched fists and his slightly swaying body…  
  
Draco wouldn’t have believed it, but this was even better than the smile he had wanted to see on Potter’s face, the one he had seen in the mirror during his own vision.  
  
He looked at Severus, while his heart sang to him like a drum far away. He had to be familiar with the man—anyone would—to see the slight signs that his arousal and passion made, but when he was this close, they were easier to see. Severus’s breathing had picked up, and his cheeks had acquired a redder tint than usual.  
  
“The description of your vision would distress you,” Severus murmured. His voice seemed to slip through the room, to coil around Draco’s ankles and shoulders like a cat. From the confused expression on Potter’s face, he felt the effect, but he was so utterly unfamiliar with it that he had no idea what he was feeling. “Is that not true?”  
  
“Well,  _yeah_ ,” Potter said, with a little drawl that Draco recognized as an attempt to regain control. “Otherwise, I would have described it to you already.”  
  
Severus simply nodded, eyes not shifting from Potter’s face, and took a step closer. Potter seemed equally focused on Severus’s face, to the point that he might honestly not have noticed the movement. “So. Instead of describing it, why don’t we act it out, and see what happens?” Severus’s voice actually got a little hoarse on the last words.  
  
Potter froze.  
  
Draco added his voice to the conversation, just in case Potter was too much in the habit of distrusting Severus to give that habit up now. “Why not? Just think of it, Potter. Whichever one of us it was, you don’t have to speak about it. You don’t have to describe it. You only need to move forwards and touch whichever one of us it was.”  
  
He found himself hoping it was him.  
  
Potter’s gaze went back and forth from him, to Severus, to him. Draco wondered if it was his imagination that Potter looked longer at him, but then he saw the faint tremors that had invaded his body, and he doubted it. Potter would probably be less afraid of approaching Draco. They  _were_ more on an equal footing, and it had once been a point of honor for neither of them to show fear in front of the other. Besides, Potter hadn’t even known Severus was alive until a few days ago.  
  
And then Potter turned and stepped up to Severus, raising one hand in such slow motion that it seemed he thought Severus would stop him before he got that far.  
  
But rather than stopping him, Severus turned his head so that Potter’s hand came to a stop on his cheek.  
  
Even then, Potter might have frozen, flinched, said something stupid, but instead, Severus raised his hand and covered Potter’s with it.  
  
Then he leaned in, and Draco shifted around to the side a little, holding his breath. He wanted a better view, but he didn’t want to disrupt what was happening in front of him, either. He wanted…he wanted it to happen.  
  
Severus’s eyelid flickered at him, a sign that he understood what Draco was doing and approved of it, on some level. But not if it distracted Potter, and Severus slid a hand beneath Potter’s chin and raised it as if to ensure that Potter wouldn’t look off to the side and freeze some more.  
  
 _You don’t need to worry,_ Draco thought. Potter was gripping Severus’s arms, holding onto him, letting Severus bear him up. All his focus was for Severus, all his breathing was for him, his limp body was for him.  
  
But someday soon, they would be for Draco as well.  
  
He had to admit that was the only thing that kept him still, watching, and let the vision happen.  
  
*  
  
The kiss was more violent than the one in the vision.  
  
Harry thought it wouldn’t be. He thought their lips would touch, and he would do something wrong, like stick his tongue in the wrong place, and Snape would pull back and sling him to the floor and taunt him. That would be horrible, but at least it would make this weird interlude be over, and let Harry go back to hating Slytherins and being an ordinary Auror in peace.  
  
But instead, Snape hissed and dragged him closer, arms around his shoulder and around his waist and in all sorts of other places that Harry had never let a man touch him before. Harry shuddered, limp, except in the place that he should have been limpest, and clutched at Snape, and ran a hand up his arm towards his shoulder.  
  
Snape pulled away from the kiss to look at him, and Harry swallowed a little and prepared for the scolding. Snape probably didn’t want to be touched while he was kissing Harry, or something.  
  
“Please,” Snape said, his voice as thick and slow as honey while he dragged his jaws apart, “continue.”  
  
Harry gasped once, because he had to, this was as overwhelming as diving underwater, and then he reached up and manipulated Snape’s head into a position that was more like the one he had seen in the vision. He knew Malfoy was watching from the side, but with Snape standing like this, Harry didn’t have to look at him. He thought looking would be the more embarrassing thing, right now.  
  
When he kissed Snape again, he did close his eyes.  
  
That might have been a mistake. Every movement of those long fingers was more  _intense_ when he had his eyes shut, from the way that Snape’s nails scraped and clutched at his waist to the way that his knuckles tangled in Harry’s hair. Harry wasn’t limp anymore, but he didn’t honestly know what he was doing. He had to focus on the movements of his tongue in Snape’s mouth, and the movements of his own lips, and he could have been clawing Snape’s eyes out with his free hand, for all he knew.  
  
Someone hissed from the side, loudly enough to almost sound like a word in Parseltongue, and Harry started and opened his eyes, having forgotten that he’d had them shut in the first place.  
  
Malfoy was moving in. His eyes were huge, and he had his arms open as though he expected to have to catch Harry if he collapsed. But his cheeks were red, and that look of burning desire…  
  
Snape hadn’t looked at him like that even after the kiss began. Harry understood that, in part, understood that Snape was more private and Malfoy more open. Well, of course he was. Hadn’t Harry been able to read Malfoy’s every emotion in school?  
  
Well, those thoughts had gone through his head, and they had given time for Malfoy to reach him and bend him nearly backwards in his desperate clutch. Then his hold gentled, and he kissed Harry on the cheek and the side of his neck before he turned his head, mouth open as if he was waiting for Harry to meet him like that.  
  
Harry thought it was more than he was capable of, to meet him like that. So he met him with a closed mouth instead, and Malfoy sighed and used his tongue to tease along the edge of Harry’s lips, asking a silent, desperate question.  
  
Harry hesitated once, and then cracked his mouth open. Instantly Malfoy’s tongue was inside, lapping up and down, flitting back and forth, and Harry gasped with surprise. It was pleasant, but not in the same way that Snape’s kiss had been. It was different.  
  
It would be bloody hard to say how it was different, but Harry knew it was.  
  
This kiss went on long enough that Harry’s legs were a trembling mess when Malfoy let him go, and Harry probably would have collapsed if not for the couch that Malfoy steered him over to. Harry sat down with a small gasp, and nodded to Malfoy. Then he put his hands over his burning face, gulping once or twice. He felt as if he could have swallowed an entire glass of wine and not really noticed it.  
  
Something bumped his hand. Harry looked up. Malfoy was holding a glass of water out to him, and that looked even better than wine. Harry seized it and swallowed it, holding a little in his mouth to swish around. It wasn’t that he wanted to wash out the taste, but the ordinary action reassured him that he was still alive, and everything was still normal.  
  
He hadn’t thought he would be doing  _this_ when he came here, that was for sure.  
  
“Those are the sorts of kisses that you saw in your vision?” Snape was the one who asked that, and of course his voice sounded calm. Harry glanced at him and saw that he was at least sitting down, on a chair that looked identical to the one he’d occupied in the other room, but his face was composed. If someone had asked him to come into the room and say which one had just been kissing someone, Snape or Malfoy…  
  
Harry turned his head and met Malfoy’s eyes, still open and bright in a way that left him with  _no doubt whatsoever_ about what Malfoy was feeling. He flushed and looked away a little.  
  
“That sort,” he said weakly. The vision had taken place in a ballroom, which might have been part of the Manor or somewhere at the Ministry, but Harry knew that the literal qualities of the room didn’t matter that much. The Glass of Heart’s Desire had shown him the first step along that path, and it had been accomplished.  
  
“There is something you can do for me, if you will.”  
  
Harry turned to Snape, remembering suddenly that he had never heard the story of how Snape had survived Nagini’s poison, and why he was living here with Malfoy. Then again, Harry thought Snape himself might wave his hand in dismissal of that part. He was a Potions master, and Malfoy had been brewing and selling magnificent potions for the last few years. It explained itself.  
  
“Of course,” he said, and flushed further when he heard how creaky his voice was. Snape smirked, but didn’t make fun of him, and Harry used that unexpected reverie to catch his breath and nod firmly. “Right. What did you need?”  
  
“I am tired of hiding,” Snape said, and leaned forwards, his eyes intent. “But I am no longer exactly sure what I was charged with, and what happened to the charges when I failed to appear for my trial. I need you to find out for me.”  
  
Harry shook his head in confusion. “There was never any trial, or charges. Since everyone thought you were dead, and all.”  
  
He let his voice rise at the end of that statement, a little invitation for Snape to explain, but Snape ignored it with a high-handed manner as magnificent as his potions with Malfoy had been. “Then I need you to find out what Ministry policy might be in a case like this, when a criminal who is believed to have faked his death appears again. At the very least, I cannot believe that I would not be charged with Albus’s murder.”  
  
Harry opened his mouth, about to say that he didn’t know, and then closed it. Well, no, he  _didn’t_ know, not right now, but he knew how he could find out. And there had been that brief period during the war before Voldemort and his allies took over the Ministry, when Snape had been listed as wanted for the murder of Dumbledore. Those charges would probably come back into force if he reappeared, but more to the point, they would still be on the record.  
  
“I can find out for you,” he replied.  
  
Snape gave him a faint smile. “Thank you,” he said. He turned to Malfoy, as though he should have something to say about it. Harry turned, too, wondering if Malfoy was concerned about Snape going back to the wizarding world after hiding him all these years, or maybe concerned about whether anyone would blame  _him_  for it.  
  
Malfoy folded his hands beneath his chin and smiled at Harry.  
  
“I’m not going to ask anything of you for right now,” he murmured. “At least not in the way you seem to be thinking I will. Only that you hurry back.”  
  
Harry discovered that his cheeks could still burn, even after everything he had shared with both of them. He cleared his throat and nodded, then hurried away in the present, towards the door. A house-elf popped up to guide him before he got lost, with a kind of discretion that he suspected Malfoy must have learned to practice if he was hiding Snape.  
  
It made Harry want to shake his head and pinch himself, but he remembered the visions in the mirror instead. Snape and Malfoy had seen their own, and Harry was sure that that was what had made him go ahead with it. He wasn’t going to be subjecting himself to anything _uniquely_ embarrassing. They had taken chances, too, and increased their chances of ridicule by sharing them with him.  
  
It was odd, to feel so comfortable around people mainly because they were taking the same kind of risk in trusting you that you did in trusting them, but Harry thought he could get used to the feeling.  
  
*  
  
“You look pleased, Severus.”  
  
Severus glanced up. He’d had the house-elves bring his tray to the library, because he hadn’t wanted to leave his book. It explained the interaction between blue gems—which were not sapphires—like the one on the frame of the Glass of Heart’s Desire and certain kinds of potions. Severus did not intend to try and pry that particular gem loose, but he was interested in seeing the potion that might result with a similar stone.  
  
“I am,” he said, and laid the book aside when it became obvious that Draco had finished his own meal, which he always insisted on eating in the formal dining room, and wanted to talk. “I think we have begun a course which will prove pleasurable in itself, as well as profitable for me personally. Why should I not be pleased?”  
  
“I thought you might be having second thoughts.” Draco held out his hand, and a perfectly trained house-elf appeared and placed a glass of brandy in his fingers. He ignored Severus’s rolling eyes with the same practiced ease, staring intently at him. “Since this  _is_ Potter that we are talking about.”  
  
Severus shook his head slowly, eyes locked with Draco’s. “I do not have the same problems with the notion that you might.”  
  
“I don’t have  _problems_.”  
  
“Then I have the same lack of them,” Severus said promptly.  
  
It took a moment, but Draco smiled, and then he tilted his head back and burst out laughing in the way he did so seldom, damn the training that Lucius had instilled in him. It was a sound Severus loved to listen to, and in his opinion, always tamed too easily. Draco calmed it quickly now, too, to a mere matter of twitching lips, but he was shaking his head, and his smile held some of the same warmth. “Look at both of us, worrying about something that it turns out neither of us needs to worry about. What a pair.”  
  
“Yes,” Severus said mildly. He waited, but sometimes Draco was unable to take a hint, and only remained sipping his brandy and smiling. There had been evenings when Severus could have looked at his smile in peace and done nothing else, but this was not one of those times. “What a pair we  _could_ make. Potter is essential to the whole vision, but not to all corners of it.”  
  
Draco sat straight up, his face flaming so suddenly that Severus wondered if he, and the Glass, had been mistaken. Perhaps Severus might need both Draco and Potter for his happiness, but that was no reason to suppose that Draco needed them both for  _his_.  
  
Then Severus remembered Draco’s vision, and was reassured. No, this was something else, not disgust and rejection.  
  
One way in which he differed from his younger self was that he had learned some patience, and did not assume that he needed to have his own way all the time. Seven years of hiding had not given him his own will in all matters, but in enough of them that he could relax about individual instances. He had brewed potions he had never known that he could, had borne down numerous challenges from those who had tried to find his carefully covered tracks, and had come to terms with some of his own guilt over killing Albus and his other parts in the war. So he waited, and had the satisfaction of seeing Draco’s throat bob up and down as he swallowed.  
  
Then Draco set aside the glass of brandy, and murmured, “Shall I come to you, or will you come to me?”  
  
“I have been waiting a long time for you to say those words,” Severus murmured, in a voice that even he had not realized would come out that husky, and then he stood and strode across the distance between them.  
  
It seemed to narrow, or perhaps that was only the effect of watching the way that Draco’s eyes widened and his head tilted up. In this, he would not surrender, not the way Potter had when Severus touched him. Potter was essentially a giving person, up and until the great sacrifice he had made for the wizarding world. Draco was proud until the end.  
  
Severus thought he might come to enjoy both tastes.  
  
He certainly enjoyed the taste of Draco’s mouth when he entered it almost gently, although the scrape of his tongue should have warned Draco what was coming. But Draco still uttered a—muffled—sound of shock when Severus leaned forwards and gave him as much of his tongue as Draco could ever need or want.  
  
For a few seconds, Draco clawed the arms of the chair, and Severus was afraid that Draco would encourage him to back off. But then Draco surged up to meet him, and Severus was the one reeling from the clash of teeth and the push of a slick tongue against his own. Draco walked him several steps back across the room, and seized Severus’s hair so that he could manipulate his head into the right position.  
  
It was exhilarating. Not the same as the kiss with Potter, but Severus would not have wanted them both to be the same. Two lovers he could not distinguish from each other would have led to confusions and problems.  
  
No, he wanted someone who could melt at his touch and someone who could challenge him—as long as that challenger understood where Severus’s priorities lay. When Severus lashed his tongue around Draco’s and gripped both his shoulders to hold him in place, Draco showed he did. He still didn’t melt, but he did let Severus take control.  
  
Severus did so with a passion that he hadn’t been ready for, a passion that he hadn’t satisfied for seven years. When he needed to do something about it, Draco had politely looked away, the way that Severus had when Draco needed to sate his. Even when they had become good friends and Severus was careful to avoid unusual risks because Draco was hiding him, they could not expect each other to be celibate.  
  
With a delicious flash, Severus wondered if Potter was.  
  
But there had been nothing like this, not for the clash and the combat of it, and not for the severe tightness of fingers upon shoulders, the groans and whimpers and entwining of a leg around his. Severus deftly avoided the attempt to unsettle his balance, and tipped  _Draco_ onto the couch instead.  
  
Draco went down with a flinging out of his hands and gasp that was beautiful to witness, and Severus was on him in seconds, his hands clasping either side of Draco’s head, his fingers settling into place on Draco’s temples and eyelids, pressing them shut. Draco stiffened and raised one hand as if he was going to stop Severus, but Severus kissed his eyelids and murmured something, and Draco sighed, then tilted his head to the side.  
  
 _Permission_.  
  
Severus licked the side of Draco’s mouth, and found that he liked the taste so much he couldn’t resist doing it again. Each time, Draco made a muffled protest and squirmed, but he didn’t try to get up or, more importantly, tell  _Severus_ to let him up. From the bulge between Draco’s legs, he wasn’t protesting the licking itself so much as the slow pace.  
  
Severus closed his eyes. Thinking about Draco’s erection had called his attention to his own, so hard that it hurt, abruptly. No matter how much he might have been able to ignore it before, he couldn’t now.  
  
He altered the pace of his licking, trying to keep it absorbing enough that Draco wouldn’t notice his hand moving until he had reached down and closed his fingers around Draco’s erection.   
  
It worked, although perhaps only because Draco had his eyes closed and was also caught up in his own reactions. He arched a little, he cried a little, and he squirmed, this time, against Severus’s hand. Severus leaned back and tightened his grip, smoothing his hand slowly, in curiosity to see if Draco would protest this kind of pace.  
  
He didn’t. Draco’s head had tilted back and he was frozen, his panting loud enough that it sounded as though he was in pain. But from the way he pushed up when Severus paused once, nothing could be further from the truth. He turned to the side and thrust himself against Severus’s resting palm, and Severus chuckled and resumed his stroking, while rutting against Draco’s hip, and flank, and side, and anything he could reach, given the position he stood in at the moment and the positions Draco was assuming from the way he turned over and over.   
  
Neither one of them could last, with the excitement of doing this for the first time between them, and soon enough Severus was coming violently against Draco’s side, still in his robes, as Draco was still in his trousers. Severus had to admit that it hadn’t even  _occurred_ to him to take his clothes off. To take Draco’s clothes off. To do anything but enjoy themselves with each other as wantonly as possible.  
  
He subsided onto the couch beside Draco, panting slightly. Draco turned his head to the side, and it took an embarrassingly long time before Severus realized what he sought. He kissed Draco tenderly, and Draco sighed and slid his tongue in, returning the kiss.  
  
It seemed a long time before either of them spoke aloud, and then it was Draco. “I’m going to enjoy this more than I thought I would,” he said. “And I was already expecting to enjoy it quite a bit.” He stretched languorously against Severus’s side. “Why don’t I do it to you, next time?”  
  
Severus laughed softly and rearranged them so that they were stretched out with Draco’s head resting on his shoulder. “I think that can be arranged.” He paused, then added, “Think about doing it with Potter.”  
  
Draco opened his eyes for the first time since this had begun, and they were already wide with desire. Severus could not be jealous of that, not when he could still see the dark patches where Draco’s desire for  _him_ had already been expressed.  
  
 _Yes, I think this will work out very well._


	5. Among the Records

Harry peered closely at the records in front of him, the rolled-up sheaves of paper that he thought had to contain the crimes that Snape had supposedly committed. He hadn’t come on them anywhere else, and this was a huge box in the Recent Crimes Section, which meant the cases that had been solved or laid aside in the past ten years. He  _hoped_ it was the right one. He had already spent two hours down here among the dust and unfriendliness of the stares from the Archive staff, and he had—  
  
He sneezed as more dust flew up, and then grimaced in resignation. He didn’t enjoy sneezing, but he could endure it for Snape’s sake. The problem with using Cleaning Charms was that it would vanish some of the older ink in the records, because of course the Ministry couldn’t spend enough money to buy  _lasting_ ink, so he didn’t dare use them.  
  
“Mate? What the hell are you doing down here?”  
  
Harry jerked up, which meant he bumped his head on the shelf above the big box. He cursed and turned around, dragging the box with him. He knew it was Ron, no reason to be alarmed, but he also wasn’t going to have this conversation with Ron staring at his back and arse.  
  
The last thought made him flush, not because he’d had it, but because he didn’t think  _Ron_ was the one who had the right to stare at his arse.  
  
“You realize you still haven’t answered me?” Ron stood in front of the nearest table with his arms folded and his heavy stare drilling into Harry. “And you’re absolutely ridiculous when you try? And I know that some important thing must have brought you down here, and you’re even more ridiculous not to let me know what it is?”  
  
Harry grimaced and ducked his head, shaking it a little. Yes, all right, he had known he would have to tell Ron about Snape and Malfoy when he started looking for Snape’s records, because nothing would explain why he wanted them but the truth. It was still embarrassing. “Fine. I’m looking for Snape’s trial records. He wants to come back out and live a normal life, and I promised I would look through the Archives.”  
  
Ron’s hands dropped, and he stood there with his mouth hanging open. Harry regarded him haughtily. He had already chosen his response, he thought. He was going to be as aloof as he could, and pretend nothing was wrong at all with the thought of wanting to fuck two men.  
  
Well, maybe there  _was_ nothing wrong with it. But it did make his stomach burn and tingle when he thought about it.  
  
“You want his trial records?” Ron whispered at last. Harry couldn’t see any reason to whisper, and started to say so, but Ron nodded at the box and moved closer. “Don’t you remember that the case was closed and they said that they didn’t want to reopen it, mate, no matter _what_ convincing new evidence you found? Don’t you remember that you told me once that you had every reason to wish Snape well, because you knew that he killed Dumbledore on orders and you were willing to forgive and forget what he did to you?”  
  
Harry licked his lips. “Snape is the one who asked me to look up the records. He wants to come back into wizarding society, but he’s afraid that charges might be brought up against him if he does. So he wanted me to see, ah, if there’s any way that he could escape having a trial right away.”  
  
Ron narrowed his eyes. “That even sounds like it could be true, assuming Snape would trust you. But there’s still something you’re not telling me.” He paused a second. “You want to arrest him and you’re just pretending to oblige him?”  
  
“No.” Harry sighed and mopped his hand through his hair.   
  
“You want to disoblige Malfoy and take his main source of income away?” Ron suddenly clapped his fist into his palm. “ _That_ was the reason that Malfoy was suddenly able to make all those brilliant potions and sell them, isn’t it?”  
  
Harry nodded, but Ron started talking again before he could, sounding satisfied. “That’s great. I never thought you would forgive Malfoy, mate. Never heard you talk about it, anyway.”  
  
“I—I have forgiven him, Ron.” Harry knew he was blushing, and that Ron was staring at him like he was mental, but, well, Harry felt a little like he was. “ _Listen_ , Ron,” he added warningly, when Ron opened his mouth to speak again. This was going to be hard enough to go through once. “I’ll tell you this.” Harry was waving his wand as he spoke, setting up the wards around them that would hold in their voices and make it impossible for someone to eavesdrop. “I’m going to say this once. And I don’t want you to interrupt until I’m done, all right?”  
  
Uneasily, Ron shifted from foot to foot. “I can’t promise that, mate. If you say something…”  
  
“ _Ron_.”  
  
Finally, Ron seemed to realize that this was different from other things Harry had asked him in the past. He hesitated a long moment, but then he nodded and drew his finger across his lips. “Fine. I’ll be quiet.” And then he sat down in a chair and looked at Harry expectantly.  
  
Harry clasped his hands in front of him. He had the feeling that he would make this confession more than once, and to less sympathetic audiences. There was nothing he could do other than make the words blunt. “The Glass of Heart’s Desire showed me a vision, because I’d done a service for its owner. It showed me that I could have what I want if I allowed Snape and Malfoy close to me.”  
  
Ron opened his mouth, prepared to break his promise, after all, it seemed, but it didn’t matter. Shock was choking him, and he couldn’t say a single word.  
  
“Yeah, I know,” Harry said. “But I want someone I can trust, and someone to take care of me, and someone who can…” He trailed off, not because he didn’t trust Ron with what he was about to say, but because he had never tried to express it in words before. He spent a long moment searching his mind before he decided that he could say it after all. “Someone I can lower my guard in front of. They’re it.”  
  
“But you can lower your guard in front of  _us!_ ” Ron’s hands were locked on the arms of his chair. “Me and Hermione! We’re the ones that you can always trust! You said so! You don’t need  _Snape and Malfoy!_ ”  
  
Harry took a deep breath, and reinforced the wards that were up against anyone hearing this. Again, his hand went up and rubbed the scar above his left eyebrow. He hadn’t done that much in the last two days, he realized. What with Snape and Malfoy and all the rest of it, the habitual gesture had faded a little bit.  
  
But Ron had followed the movement of Harry’s hand, and his own eyes were slits. “Is that what it’s all about, Harry? You feel that you can’t trust me since the Whibble case?”  
  
Harry just looked steadily into Ron’s eyes, and said nothing. Whibble had been a wizard who had discovered his talent for Legilimency late in life, and combined that with a spell he’d crafted to pull uncomfortable secrets to the surface of everyone’s mind, where people would speak them before they ever thought about what they were saying. Whibble had mostly used that to blackmail his victims, but when Harry and Ron finally managed to track him down and corner him, he had used it on them, too.  
  
“You know that I love both you  _and_ Hermione.” Ron was speaking with the same steadiness, the kind of steadiness that they’d both used to repair their friendship after that day. “Just not in the same way. Hell, I wouldn’t  _want_ it to be in the same way. And I don’t think that you would, either.”  
  
“No,” Harry said quietly, and gave Ron a small smile. “I don’t think either of us would want that. But it does mean that—that I want someone who loves me that way. I don’t want it to be you. But I want someone.”  
  
Ron looked at him with desolate eyes. Harry sighed a little. The secret Whibble had forced to the surface of Ron’s mind and out of his lips was that, if Ron had to choose between rescuing Harry and Hermione from a Dark wizard, then he would rescue Hermione. Harry had been so stunned, hurt, distracted, that Whibble had managed to fling a Dark Cutting Curse at him, and it had left the scar above Harry’s eye that refused to heal completely.  
  
“I can understand why you want someone to love you that way,” said Ron, and shook his head, hard, as though the admission had been harder for him than Harry could understand. “But… _Snape and Malfoy_?”  
  
Harry laughed and reached out to take his friend’s hand and help him to his feet. “I don’t know. I could always walk away if it turns out that it’s not what I want. But I think I need to pursue it for a little while. And right now, I can help Snape by finding out exactly what his trial records say. So leave it alone. All right?”  
  
Ron stood there so long that Harry didn’t know if he would. Ron was perfectly capable of going to Hermione and engaging with her in a plot to save Harry’s life, if it turned out that he thought Harry was impervious to argument.  
  
Then Ron rolled his eyes in the old, familiar way, and reached out and clasped Harry’s hand again. “Fine. If it’s not what you want, you walk away.”  
  
Harry nodded. He had always intended to do that, really. The mirror said he could have this kind of love, and the vision was tempting, for reasons that Harry would have found hard to name even to himself. But the mirror could be wrong, too. Harry wouldn’t enslave himself to a vision that had no hope of coming true.  
  
“Good,” Ron said, and hesitated one more time, and then departed the Archives with a little wave. Harry smiled and turned back to the box in front of him, digging through it once more, patiently, searching for Snape’s trial records.  
  
*  
  
Draco frowned up at the ceiling, then around to either side of himself. It took him long moments to remember why he was sprawled on a couch in the middle of the big red sitting room instead of bed, especially since it was late, from the shadows on the walls.  
  
Oh, right. Draco sat up, slowly. He and Severus had been brewing a potion together, and the fumes had made Draco dizzy and lightheaded. It didn’t happen often, but sometimes with potions that used grindylow toes, which he was mildly allergic to. He’d had to leave the lab, and let Severus finish the potion alone. He had stumbled as far as the sitting room before giving up, collapsing on the high-backed red couch, and calling one of the house-elves for blankets.  
  
This time, one of the elves appeared with a tray of steaming tea and biscuits. Draco frowned and shook his head. He ate meals at this time of day in the formal dining room only. It was the least he could do, in remembrance of his parents.  
  
“Mr. Harry Potter is being here, sir,” said the elf, and set the tray on a table, beginning to pour tea carefully out of the pot’s high silver spout into thin, delicate cups. There were three, Draco noticed. Severus must have finished his work in the lab.  
  
Draco paused, and then smiled. That was another reason he had been overcome, besides his allergy. He was  _bored,_ without Potter around, and not concentrating properly on the brewing procedure of the potion.  
  
That might not be the best thing, if Potter didn’t choose them after all. But he had come here on his own this time, not because they’d made an agreement and he had to honor it. As he picked up the nearest cup and sipped the tea, Draco found himself looking forward to an afternoon in Potter’s company as he had never thought he could.  
  
*  
  
“Master Harry Potter is be coming this way!”  
  
 _Do all the bloody house-elves know about that damned mirror?_ Harry was half-convinced they did. The one trotting in front of him kept looking back over its shoulder and gesturing him helpfully forwards, its smile wide and bright. The elves had been polite enough the times that Harry had visited the Manor before, but this was beyond that.  
  
They led him into a room so furnished with red that Harry was taken aback. Who knew a family full of Slytherins could put up with that much of a Gryffindor color? But there were red roses on the walls, and huge, plush scarlet furniture, and a mantel made of what Harry thought might be cherry wood.  
  
“Please, Harry, sit.”  
  
The warm words made Harry’s breath catch in his throat in the moment before he spun around. He had almost lifted his wand, but it was just his first name. It was nothing to make him feel battered and swept off his feet, as though a wave had crashed into him. It was _normal_. It was nothing but  _normality_.  
  
Nothing but that, to see Malfoy rise to his feet and hold out a cup of tea to him. Anyone could have offered tea. Anyone else might not have had an irritated house-elf hovering off to the side, which suggested to Harry that the elf had wanted to pour the tea and Malfoy had got in the way, but it was still an ordinary gesture.  
  
Nothing to make his breath catch, so Harry managed to sit down with the teacup and a nod to Malfoy. Then he sipped the tea, and couldn’t help the way his breath caught this time and he looked up at Malfoy with a smile. “This is  _delicious_.”  
  
“Nippy always did make the best tea.” Malfoy smiled serenely at him and sat back down on the couch that, from the tangle of blankets, he’d been using as a bed. Harry blinked a little. He hadn’t thought that Malfoy would sleep anywhere but in some huge bed with even richer sheets and bigger pillows than the ones they had at Hogwarts.  
  
 _Like the one in your vision?_  
  
Harry hoped that his flush could be attributed to the heat of the tea.  
  
“Will Snape be joining us?” Harry did ask, pushing resolutely into the real purpose of his visit. It wasn’t to exchange jokes and banter with Malfoy, no matter how tempting that was. He drew the sheaf of parchments out of his robe pocket and waved his wand. They unshrank themselves, returning to normal size, and Harry laid them calmly on the table in front of him. “I think these documents relate most to him. I took a few of your trial records, too, but just to make sure that you couldn’t be implicated for anything that related to him. You can’t.” He looked up and smiled at Malfoy again. At least this smile didn’t feel unnatural. “So there’s no way they can try you for harboring a fugitive.”  
  
“ _Am_  I a fugitive?”  
  
Harry shivered as though he had a fever when Snape’s voice spilled into the room, followed by Snape himself. This was what he had wanted, Harry told himself sternly, and took a fortifying gulp of the tea, ignoring the way Malfoy winced a little. If it was the finest tea in his kitchens, he probably thought Harry should sip it. “Not according to the records, no. They accepted that you weren’t guilty of murder after I showed them my own memories. I mean, my memories of your memories.” He paused, wondering about something. “Do you want those memories back?”  
  
Snape’s mouth quirked for a moment, and he settled into his own seat, accepting the cup of tea that the house-elf—Nippy?—offered him a moment later. “I am content to have the memories that you have helped me make recently. They are payment of that debt, if it needed to be paid.”  
  
Harry felt his face flush hot again, because of course the  _recent memories_ were the ones of the vision and the way that Harry had kissed both Snape and Malfoy as if he had spent years lusting after them. “Right. Well.” He cleared his throat when those words weren’t sufficient and held out the sheaf of parchment to Snape. “You’ll probably want to see them for yourself.”  
  
Snape took the parchments, but didn’t immediately sort through them. He laid them down in his lap instead, and continued to regard Harry with the most piercing sort of gaze. Harry felt irritation trickle down his spine. “Is there anything else you wanted?” he asked, and set aside his teacup. “Because I should really be getting back to the Ministry.”  
  
“You just got here.” Malfoy’s voice was the soothing one, now, and Harry felt himself relax almost against his will. “And we do have some things to talk about.”  
  
Snape nodded and turned back to the parchments. “Not guilty of murder,” he said. “Not a fugitive. Which does not mean that the world will rejoice to see me alive.”  
  
Harry relaxed further. This was something he understood, the sort of legal tangles that Snape could get into. Well, he  _should,_ after a bloody afternoon of studying the parchment. “I can’t say that everyone will be happy, but I don’t think that they can actually charge you. You were forgiven for your crimes as a Death Eater during the same time that you were pardoned for the murder. Again, based on my memories. There are some people who might sue you personally, and lots of people won’t be happy to see you, but the Ministry can’t do anything.”  
  
“Good,” said Snape, and then picked up the parchments. Harry thought he would look further through them for details, but  _he laid them aside,_ on the same table that held the teatray, and focused back on Harry in a way that made his heartbeat fill his throat. “Now. On to the other things that we have to talk about.”  
  
Harry flung a half-panicked glance at Malfoy, but he was only watching with one hand on his teacup, one on his knee, and a bright, amused smile on his face.  
  
“What?” Harry asked. His voice came out thin and nervous. He scowled and forced it back down into something approaching normality. “I mean, yeah, I kissed you, and I’m willing to try out what the mirror recommends, but that doesn’t mean that we’re suddenly—I don’t know,  _lovers_ in all senses of the word.”  
  
“What I want to do will lead to us being lovers eventually, I hope,” said Snape, voice low and slow and persuasive. “Your vision gave you the sense of having someone to trust?”  
  
“Two people,” Harry muttered, and sneaked a glance at Malfoy again. Malfoy should really do something about how bright his smile was, Harry thought. He wasn’t sure that was medically healthy.  
  
“Then we should try and become those people,” said Snape, and reached across the distance between him and Harry. Harry stared at him in turn. Snape couldn’t nearly reach him from there. Snape sighed a little, and flexed his fingers. “Will you come  _here_ and let us try?”  
  
“You mean that you think you aren’t those people yet?” Harry muttered, but he stood up. It was true that the Glass of Heart’s Desire only showed the path to where they were going, not that they were already at the destination.  
  
He moved forwards step by step, until he was near enough to clasp Snape’s hand easily. He opened his mouth to ask what was next, and started a bit when Malfoy stood up and pressed himself to Harry’s back, his arms slipping around Harry’s waist. That was the perfect height for Malfoy to rest his lips on the nape of Harry’s neck, too. Harry sighed and tipped his head back.  
  
“Yes, that’s it,” Snape said, his voice as thick as though he was hard. Harry couldn’t look down and see if he was. He was a little involved in the way that Malfoy’s lips moved against his nape, the soft giving way to the warm as Malfoy’s tongue slipped in, and Harry realized that he was forgetting about his nervousness, leaning further back.  
  
“You trust me not to drop you already,” Malfoy breathed into his ear. “It’s remarkable.”  
  
“What, were you planning on it?” Harry got a little of his paranoia back now that Malfoy wasn’t touching him with lips and tongue. He gave Snape a hard look. “Is this some kind of test?”  
  
“Yes,” said Snape, standing. Harry blinked, shocked that he’d admitted it, and Snape leaned in. “But for us as much as for you. I don’t know that we should progress to sex yet. Can you remove your shirt and show us some of those scars you’re hiding? And tell us the tale of _this_?” He reached out to trace the scar over Harry’s left eye, the one from the confrontation with Whibble.  
  
Harry swallowed and wondered what would happen if he pulled away and stormed out of there. Probably just that his wish wouldn’t come true, he thought. He didn’t think Snape or Malfoy would follow him. He didn’t think they’d make fun of him.  
  
 _And that’s a sort of trust already, isn’t it?_  
  
“The scar came from a Dark wizard who liked to use Legilimency to make people speak their secrets,” Harry said, when some moments had passed and Malfoy’s arms hadn’t left his waist and Snape’s finger hadn’t left his eyebrow. “I got distracted by something he made Ron say, and he was able to fling a hex at me that left a mark.”  
  
“What did Weasley say?” Malfoy asked in interest.  
  
Harry shook his head. That was Ron’s secret to betray, if for some unfathomable reason he ever wanted Snape and Malfoy to know it, and not his. “And how did you know that I have scars, anyway?” he added to Snape. “Beyond the ones that everyone knows I have.” The _Daily Prophet_ had found out about Umbridge and her Blood Quill after the war, and run stories on that, along with the lightning bolt scar.  _SCARRED SAVIOR!_  had been their favorite headline for almost a year.  
  
“I can see the edge of one above your shirt collar,” Snape whispered, as if confessing a great secret. “I would like to see more of it.”  
  
Harry licked his lips. There was no reason for that confession to make him feel as if he was draped in warm melting chocolate. There was no reason for it to make him  _hot_ , for God’s sake.  
  
But it did. And he knew that Snape and Malfoy, standing as close to him as they were, couldn’t mistake his interest for anything other than what it was.  
  
“All right,” he whispered back, and stepped away to begin unbuttoning his shirt.


	6. Desires Before and After

Severus watched with narrowed eyes as Potter stripped off his shirt. Now and then, Potter gave Severus a glance over his shoulder, as if he thought those narrowed eyes meant contempt that would slap out at him at any moment.  
  
He would, perhaps, be hardly more comforted if he knew the real reason that Severus was looking at him like that. Severus was attempting to keep his greed and hunger from showing all over his face.  
  
Yes, Potter was handsome. Yes, he kissed better than Severus had thought he would, and his presence in the vision the mirror had granted Severus was enough to make Severus interested in securing his goodwill, even if they never ended up lovers. Severus was less convinced than either Draco or Potter that the Glass of Heart’s Desire showed a  _literal_ vision of what would come to pass. It could be symbolic. Having Draco and Potter beside him as his lovers might end up meaning something else.  
  
But what stirred Severus’s true hunger was the way that Potter had decided to undress in front of them, to show them the truth and tell them secrets that he had obviously kept hidden from people all over the wizarding world. If he had  _cared_  to tell those secrets, he could have sold them to the highest bidder.  
  
Now, though…  
  
Now, as Potter’s shirt slipped down his shoulders and pooled on the floor, and Potter stood there with his head tilted to the side, panting slightly, his chest and back both rising and falling with the movement, Severus knew he had not. Because soft ropes of scars crossed Potter’s back, and there was no story to explain those that Severus had ever heard of.  
  
“Where did you get those? Those scars?” Draco asked it softly, and it was for the best that he did. Severus was not sure he would have said something entirely appropriate if he had to be the one to ask, or if he would have  _sounded_ appropriate.  
  
Potter flushed and glanced back over his shoulder, as though he needed to check on his own back, as if he might have forgotten the marks he bore. The self-consciousness only made Severus’s hands tighten on his knees. Yes, better to leave such matters up to Draco. He would have sounded not only inappropriate, but dangerous, if he spoke now.  
  
“Most of them from my cases, of course,” Potter was saying, slowly. He looked back and forth from Severus to Draco as if he thought they must know the answer. “There were curses. And sometimes burns. And quite often Dark creatures,” he added, a grin slipping over his face that made Severus want to snort. Some people were made for such things.  
  
“I don’t recognize this one. What is it?” And Draco came forwards and laid a hand over one large scar near the small of Potter’s back that looked like a starfish, and was white on the edges, but turned blue near the center.  
  
Severus could not stand it anymore. He stood up and moved nearer, and knew from the faint twitch of the corner of Potter’s eyelid that he was aware of the movement, although he kept his attention focused on Draco.  
  
“Which one? It’s hard to see from this angle,” Potter complained.  
  
Draco could have described the scar, but that would have lost him an opportunity, and frankly, Severus could not blame him for taking every chance he could. He pressed down with his hand and moved it in firm circles instead. “This one,” he whispered.  
  
Severus was watching Potter’s face, more closely at the moment than Potter could. He saw the moment when Potter’s lips parted and he released a hard huff of breath, when his eyelashes fluttered.  
  
Restraint gone, desire taking him over, Severus moved up beside Potter and lightly took his chin. Potter glanced at him, his eyelids still gently fluttering.  
  
“I believe Draco means the one that changes colors, from blue to white,” Severus said, and was proud of the way that Potter leaned in a little at the sound of his voice. If it  _was_ dangerous in tone, perhaps it was the kind of danger that evidently attracted Potter.  
  
“That one? That one.” Potter took a moment to recover, and then snorted and cocked his head to the side. His eyes were sharp and clear again, but Severus liked them even better that way than hazed with desire. It meant Potter was paying attention and focused on the here and now. “That one was the result of a curse from a wizard who’d been dosing himself with so many Skill-Enhancing Potions that it affected his magic.”  
  
Severus frowned. The Skill-Enhancing Potion could sharpen a wizard’s ability in a certain field, such as dueling or Dark Arts, depending on the particular draft made and consumed. But he had never heard of someone taking so many that it made his spells turn into something never seen before. “Why would anyone do that?”  
  
“There’s a little secret about Dark wizards,” Potter breathed, bending forwards. “Especially the ones I chase. I wouldn’t tell this to just anyone.”  
  
Severus nodded, mesmerized by the way that Potter’s eyes held his. Standing still behind Potter, Draco raised a hand and gently touched Potter’s bare shoulder.  
  
Potter twitched a little, but continued in the same grave tone. “Not all of them are sane.”  
  
Severus blinked, blinked again, and then reached out and rested his own hands on Potter’s shoulders. “You don’t say,” he whispered. “I am glad that you know the secrets of fighting against them, so that you may survive.”  
  
“You’re glad I survived, of course.” Potter turned his head to the side, still speaking to them but no longer meeting their eyes. Severus could feel as well as see the blush spreading under his touch. “Well, you would be. You fought so hard to keep me alive, and I didn’t appreciate that much at the time.”  
  
Severus shook his head. They could speak of the past, but they had better things to speak of just now. “Let me touch you,” he said, and leaned forwards so he could kiss Potter again.  
  
This time, Potter’s tongue was more than eager, leaping to the task so that Severus almost stumbled and spread his hands out on Potter’s shoulders. Draco laughed across from him, deep and welcoming, and tugged Potter’s head back by his hair to kiss him in turn. Potter twisted, seemed to realize the awkward angle, and turned around completely so that he could get his own hands into Draco’s hair and clothes.  
  
Severus watched them kiss, felt the warmth in his own belly, and saw the moment when Potter turned within Draco’s embrace to look back at Severus. His eyes were brilliant enough that Severus felt an old jolt in his belly. It was like looking at trees—at trees in summer sunlight.  
  
 _Harry._ This was  _Harry_ , and not Potter. Harry was the one who smiled at people that way.  
  
Severus did not know where the intuition had come from, and he did not want to question it. He stretched out a hand instead. “Come, Harry. Come with us to the bedroom, where you can explain some of your other scars.”  
  
At this late moment, he didn’t expect the breath to catch in Harry’s lungs, or the way he nearly took a step back from Severus’s hand, eyeing it as though he suspected it of clutching an invisible poisonous snake. Severus watched him in blank surprise that he didn’t bother to hide. Harry was probably the closest to any of them to claiming his vision at this point. What would make him hesitate?  
  
*  
  
 _Are they going to take me to that room? That bed? The one I saw in the vision?_  
  
Harry found himself breathless at the thought, and sweating. He shivered. The sweat felt cold, and he wondered for a moment if it was just being without the shirt, or—or if it was something else, some instinct warning him that he might not like this.  
  
“Are you all right, Harry?” Malfoy’s voice was utterly calm, far more sure than the expression on Snape’s face at the moment, and his grip on Harry’s shoulders was also firm and steady.  
  
“I wondered—I wondered if the bedroom you were going to take me to was the one I saw in the mirror,” Harry whispered, and he trembled a little when Malfoy’s hands on his shoulders trembled.  
  
“I doubt it,” Malfoy said. “Although you never did tell us exactly what color the sheets on the bed were there, and how it was arranged. Do you want us to conjure something like that for you? I can. I will,” he added, as Harry turned around and faced him again.  
  
Harry stared at him. Malfoy still looked the same as far as his eye and hair color went, and if his face had changed from the boy Harry knew, it was mostly in terms of the expressions that sat on it. The angles hadn’t softened that much.  
  
“You—you would do something like that?” Harry asked, and when Malfoy looked at him as though he couldn’t comprehend why it would be trouble, shrugged and nodded, Harry had to smile. “Thank you, Draco.”  
  
He felt the understanding in both of them when he spoke, the hungry reaction backwards, and then Snape moved up behind him and lowered his head so that he was breathing on the back of Harry’s neck. “And me?” he whispered.  
  
Harry reached over his shoulder, sliding his fingers into long strands of hair, and tugging. Snape said nothing, made no sound, and Harry thought the noise he’d make depended a lot on the next few moments. “Thank you, Severus.”  
  
Draco started kissing him from the front then, his tongue sliding completely into Harry’s mouth, and Severus did the same on the nape of his neck. Harry closed his eyes and sighed, admitting their tongues, admitting their touch, and not caring much when they lifted him off his feet and carried him towards whatever bedroom they had in mind. This was incredible. And he felt…  
  
Not submissive. Not exactly. Not as relaxed and trusting as he had seemed to be in the vision in the glass.  
  
But  _eager_. Excited. Breathless with anticipation, in the way that nothing but chasing a criminal had made him in a long time.  
  
 _I want them. I want this. I want everything._  
  
*  
  
Draco had to admit that Harry looked very good sprawled out on the bed in the bedroom he’d chosen, which wasn’t his and wasn’t Severus’s and hadn’t belonged to anyone for the past ten years. If Harry chose to come back often enough, then it might become his. But Draco, for now, had to admire the dark glow of the green sheets against Harry’s skin and hair, and had to reach down and start working on the trousers that Harry had kept on.  
  
Harry, meanwhile, was sitting up with his back to Draco, although he lifted his hips and legs to let Draco drag his trousers off. Severus was sitting behind Harry, tracing with his fingers all the many, many scars that they hadn’t received any explanation of yet.  
  
“What is this one?” Draco heard Severus whisper, with his head near Harry’s shoulder and his hand nearly covering one that looked like a bite made by a mouth with conical teeth.  
  
Harry started to reply, but Draco leaned down and kissed his hip, which had its own share of scars. It really looked as though something had held Harry down with a grip there, maybe using a clawed hand, and tried to eat him. Harry moaned.  
  
“Your pardon, Draco,” Severus said, his eyes glinting at Draco over Harry’s shoulder. “I did not realize that you were not in the mood for  _stories_.”  
  
“I’m in the mood for all sorts of stories,” Draco said. “But I want to know the stories that Harry’s body is going to tell us, as well as his mouth.” He let his hand slide around Harry’s hip again, and touched the coruscating claw marks. “What about this one?” Then he fastened his mouth on it and began to suck.  
  
Harry was moaning continuously now, although Draco thought he was also trying to get words out of his mouth to answer Severus. A second later, he started sagging, and Severus moved back so that he could lie down on the bed. Harry was flushed, breathless, probably also because of Severus’s hand that was tracing one of the scars on the side of his ribcage.  
  
“You can tell us everything,” Severus whispered, as he bent down and started kissing Harry on the mouth. “Later,” he added, drawing back.  
  
Draco thought Harry tried to get the breath for a retort at that, but Severus was back too soon, kissing him until Harry raised his arms and wrapped them around Severus’s shoulders, still gasping, still trying hard to breathe.  
  
“How do you want to do this?” Severus asked, lifting his head but keeping one hand on Harry’s throat, stroking.  
  
Draco blinked, a little surprised that Severus would pause and ask Harry that now instead of simply overwhelming him with an onslaught of kisses, but then realized Severus was speaking to  _him_. He hesitated, once, and then spoke, because he knew, and he wasn’t about to pass up a free opportunity if Severus was really offering him one. “I want to fuck him.  _Badly_.”  
  
Severus might have demurred, because for all Draco knew he wanted to do the same thing, but he only smiled. Perhaps he was thinking of the other visions in the mirror and how they would have all their lives for this, Draco thought. Or at least a good portion of time.  
  
“Good,” said Severus, which could have meant all sorts of things, and leaned down to whisper into Harry’s ear. No matter how Draco strained his senses, he couldn’t hear what Severus was whispering. But it seemed to reach to Harry easily enough, and from the soft groan that rattled Harry’s body, it was one he agreed with. A second later, he got his hands and legs into the proper position, and flopped over on his stomach.  
  
Draco swallowed and glanced at Severus, encountering enough amusement in his eyes that he looked away again. Severus had probably skimmed off the surface of Draco’s mind that he’d like to do it this way, so he could look at all those scars Harry was offering to him, to them, as emblems of trust, and so that he would be less likely to hurt Harry, the first time out.  
  
“Have you been with a man before?” Draco whispered, easing up behind Harry and cupping the sides of his ribcage gently in his hands while Severus went to get the lube. Harry was too thin, although Draco thought that probably came from almost constant exercise as an Auror and not deliberate starvation. Well, once the house-elves got hold of him, that wouldn’t be a problem anymore.  
  
Harry hesitated, and Draco ran a gentle hand over the back of his neck. “I promise, you don’t need to reveal names,” he breathed. “I’m just trying to decide how rough I need to avoid being.”  
  
Harry reached back one hand, and after a moment when he flailed around and Draco felt a bit stupid, he finally figured out what Harry wanted him to do. He clasped it, entwining their fingers, and Harry sighed and rubbed his face into the sheets.  
  
“No,” he whispered. “Not like this. A few—a few kisses, and other things. But not like this. I want—”  
  
“You want gentle,” Draco finished, exaltation burning in him with a soft golden flame. “Like the Glass showed. Right?”  
  
Harry nodded, and Draco smiled and sat back a little, although he made sure not to release Harry’s naked body from the warm covering of his own. “Then I’ll be gentle,” he whispered, and Harry shivered violently in a way that had nothing to do with cold or fear.  
  
Draco glided his hands again over Harry’s ribs, delighting in yet another shiver, and then tilted his head towards the doorway. Severus stood there, and watched with a look in his eyes that Draco had seen before, but not often. It happened when Severus was looking at something he  _truly_ desired, a desire that would not release him.  
  
“It’s all right,” Draco whispered, although he couldn’t have said which of them he was trying to reassure.  
  
Whichever one it was—or maybe it was all of them, including Draco himself—it worked. Severus shook his head and came forwards, one hand stretched out with the jar of lube cradled in it. Draco took it, and made sure to run his fingers over the center of Severus’s palm. Severus nodded to him, eyes still bright, and stepped back so that Draco could coat his fingers thoroughly.  
  
Harry had begun to shiver with what seemed to be cold this time. Before Draco could even reach for his wand, Severus had cast a Warming Charm that coated Harry with the feeling of being in front of a fire. Harry sighed and relaxed.  
  
“I can’t remember the last time someone did that for me,” he whispered.  
  
Draco would have pursued the statement in other contexts, asked about Harry’s Auror partners and friends, but he didn’t want to. He wanted Harry to enjoy what  _they_ could do for him, and that was a lot. He slid his fingers down to Harry’s arse, and around it. Harry caught his breath and didn’t let it go.  
  
“Harry.”  
  
Once again, it was Severus who had moved, faster than Draco could have with the position he was in. He cradled Harry’s chin and looked into his eyes. Harry swallowed back what could have been a protest and met his gaze, bending his neck a little to do it. Severus promptly readjusted his position so that Harry didn’t have to hurt his neck looking at him.  
  
“You can relax,” Severus whispered. “We can do what you need to help you relax. Or you can do it on your own. But either way, if you do not, then Draco cannot be as gentle as he wants to.” He had started long, slow stroking motions down the center of Harry’s back, where his spine pressed against his skin in a taut curve. “We do not want to hurt you. Do you want us to stop?”  
  
Draco bit back a groan. Merlin, he hoped not. He was hard and so  _flushed_ , and although he knew that he could relieve that with a wank if he really had to, what he  _wanted_ was to finish in Harry’s body.  
  
But he watched Harry’s fluttering, trembling eyelashes for long minutes, and he knew that Harry was the one who had to make the decision here. And Draco even wanted him to, although it took him a long moment to think past the clamoring desires of his body. He  _wanted_ Harry to, because it would be better that way, it would be stronger. It would be more of what they all wanted, and after his vision in the mirror, Draco wanted to give pleasure to both his lovers in that way.  
  
And then Harry nodded, such a small motion of his head on the pillow that Draco thought he probably would have missed it if he hadn’t been right behind Harry’s arse. Harry spread his hands out, one of them clasping Severus’s hand, and the other digging beneath the pillow as though he would find something to grip there.  
  
“I’m ready,” he whispered.  
  
Draco skimmed a quick finger down Harry’s arse, doubting it for a moment, but he had to admit that Harry’s muscles were much less tense than they had been only a short time before. He nodded to Severus and coated his fingers with even more lube, to replace what had rubbed off in other places on Harry’s skin, and then slid his fingers inside.  
  
Two at once, which perhaps he shouldn’t have done, but Severus bent over and spoke into Harry’s ear, and then cast a Relaxing Charm. Harry sighed and turned so that his cheek rested on Severus’s arm.  
  
Draco half-smiled. Well, he had worried that Severus would feel left out because Draco was going to be the first one to take Harry. This was a way to ensure that didn’t happen.  
  
“I feel…so…” Harry breathed as Draco’s fingers sank into him and twisted, probed, worked, loosened.  
  
“Unique?” Draco asked, and Harry jolted his head to the side to blink at him, before he nodded with a faint smile and closed his eyes.  
  
“That’ll do for a start.”  
  
Draco hummed and slid his fingers deeper and still deeper. He had to spend a lot more time doing this than he would have for most other lovers, but he didn’t mind. It was relaxing for  _him_ , actually, to see the way that Harry’s face softened and his breathing evened out, as though he was going into a kind of trance. But whenever Draco thought he might be going to sleep, his body would quiver responsively around Draco’s touch, and Draco would know that, instead, he was on the verge of waking up fully.  
  
Then Draco saw Harry’s lips forming words, and bent close enough to see that they were, “ _I’m ready_.”  
  
From the deeply amused expression on Severus’s face, he had seen the message before Draco had. Draco snorted and slid his arms around Harry’s body, holding them still for a second to hide his own trembling.  
  
Or maybe he didn’t need to hide it, not in front of Harry and Severus. Maybe that was part of the promise of the mirror, when it said that he would have people to trust. Maybe he didn’t have to hide something so simple from them.  
  
Draco swallowed and slid slowly into Harry, trying for the same trance-like state that he’d used to get Harry ready with his fingers. He didn’t think he quite succeeded, but he did know that Harry was breathing out in little pants of pleasure, instead of being anxious, and he reckoned that he was at least coming close.  
  
“That feels so  _good_ ,” Harry said, the words coming out all at once, in a rush.  
  
Draco smiled, and waited one more moment, to make sure nothing changed. It was also a moment when Severus watched him with brilliant eyes, and the last of Draco’s tension departed his shoulders. Yes, he should have known that Severus would not make fun of him for anything he showed during these moments.  
  
Because, despite the different visions in the Glass of Heart’s Desire and their different ways of approaching the matter, at bottom they wanted much the same thing: the trust of other people, lovers they could drop their guard around. And Severus wasn’t foolish enough to sacrifice the deep pleasure and honor of such lovers for a moment’s joke.  
  
“Draco, are you ever going to move, or not? I know I can feel better.”  
  
Draco blinked and refocused on Harry, breaking his eye contact with Severus. He got it back a moment later, as Severus bent over to kiss the back of Harry’s neck, his eyes glowing in deep amusement at Draco.  
  
“Yeah,” Draco said, and took a breath that seemed to penetrate far deeper into his lungs than it had any right to. “Yeah, I can move.”  
  
And he began.


	7. A Taste of Paradise

The moment when Draco began to really move, instead of just sitting there and stroking his sides, was one of the most wonderful Harry had ever had.  
  
Not that Harry didn’t  _like_ the way Draco had stroked his sides, or the way that he murmured praise into Harry’s ear, and the way that his individual fingertips felt, skating up and down, leaving little tingling imprints that made Harry want to reach for his cock. But it was the difference between liking and adoration.  
  
And he hadn’t known that he would feel this good with someone moving in and out of him. He’d hoped for it, based on the vision. Then he’d thought he might, after seeing the way that Draco and  _Severus_  were both so confident about it.  
  
But it was another thing to be under one of them, with someone above him who knew what he was doing.  
  
Harry took in a deep breath and held it, only to let it go again with a whoosh when Severus pinched the back of his neck. Harry opened one eye and glared up at him. Severus returned a serene smile, and then bent down to kiss Harry and play with his hair, a tender gesture that Harry would never have thought he could make.  
  
The lightness of the fingers through his hair, their slenderness, was a counterpoint to the way that Draco’s cock surged and thrashed. Harry gasped as Draco hit what must have been his prostate and half-rolled his head, wondering if he could reach down to his cock after all when he was on his stomach and it was pinned between him and the sheets.  
  
“Do you want some help?” Severus murmured into his ear, and in contrast to the way he would have said it before, there was nothing mocking about his tone at all.  
  
“ _Please_ ,” Harry gasped. Draco was uttering wordless whispers over his back, and his hands had stilled to firm holds on Harry’s hips, and Severus’s hand was sliding over his chest, fingers spread to brush through the hair that led towards his groin. It was all good, all of it, and still nothing was as good as the way that Draco’s cock pushed inside him. Harry tried a tentative thrust back, and Draco groaned and quickened his pace.  
  
“I would like to help you,” Severus said, and he moved down the bed and adjusted the position of his arm until he reached the place where he could touch Harry’s cock.  
  
Harry thought he felt a literal sizzle down his nerves, and an old, stupid rumor about using Lightning Hexes and Stinging Charms in bed, whispered between the Gryffindor boys when the lights were out, passed through Harry’s mind. But it was only fingers, and his cock, and his arse, and Draco’s cock.  
  
It was better than he’d known. Good enough to make him sag into the bed, as he was stroked inside and out, up and down and back and forth, and he knew that at any second he would come. It had never happened so quickly before.  
  
He choked out a warning to Severus, and clawed at his hand when he wouldn’t move it. Severus only smiled and twisted his arm a little more, at what seemed like an awkward angle, to stroke Harry faster.  
  
Then Harry couldn’t worry any more about whether Severus’s hand or Draco’s sheets or whatever would get dirty. He had shut his eyes and was shooting, inwards and outwards and downwards and up behind his eyelids.  
  
The warmth raced through him, and doubled back, maybe even redoubled, because Draco was still thrusting steadily behind him, and it was clear that he hadn’t come yet. Harry half-sobbed. Sex had been good before, but never as good as this. He hadn’t—he just hadn’t  _felt_ like this before.  
  
“Well done, Harry,” Severus said into his ear.  
  
Harry wanted to laugh. It seemed like a strange thing to say after someone else’s orgasm. Maybe if Severus wanted to say it to Draco, or to himself, since their combined technique had brought Harry off…  
  
But when Harry opened his eyes, ready to play it off with a joke, he saw the way that Severus looked at him, and caught his breath. It wasn’t coming that Severus meant to praise him for, or not solely. It was doing it in front of them, trusting them enough to give them the chance.  
  
Harry turned his hand sideways, and his fingers entwined, for a moment, with Severus’s, who gave him a brilliant smile.  
  
Then Draco sped up, so suddenly that Harry got pushed up the bed and his hand jerked out of Severus’s, and the groan into the back of his neck told Harry was what imminent. He reached back, trying to touch Draco’s shoulder or something, not really getting more than a handful of swiftly moving flesh.  
  
The arch, the push, the splatter, the rush of heat inside him, wasn’t  _quite_ as good as his own coming, but it was still better than he had thought it could be.  
  
Half-curled on the sheets, dazed, utterly relaxed, Harry felt Draco pull out of him with a quietly murmured spell. Draco’s hand slid down his back for a second, lingering on the curve of his spine. Harry managed to move his head, which felt like it was made of granite, to the side so he could fasten his eyes on Draco.  
  
Draco was smiling at him, so open and delighted that Harry blushed. And since he was completely naked, there was no hiding how far the blush went.  
  
Draco reached out and toyed for a second with Harry’s hole, dipping his hand down to touch his balls, a look of private and deep satisfaction on his face. If Harry had still had some doubt that he and Severus might keep this afternoon to themselves, it dissipated then. Draco wanted to keep this to the three of them, not share it with anyone.  
  
Then it was Draco’s turn to move up the bed, and kiss Harry languidly enough that the taste of his mouth seemed likely to soak into Harry’s tongue before he was done. “Thank you,” he whispered into Harry’s lips.  
  
Harry thought he could have lain there forever, and enjoyed Draco’s kisses. But he had forgotten one practicality of being in a bed with two lovers, instead of one.  
  
That practicality softly cleared his throat, and Harry started and turned towards him. Severus was sitting up now, legs deliberately drawn back so that Harry could see his cock, and the way that his hand moved on it. Harry swallowed, wondering if he was going to have any saliva left when the afternoon was done.  
  
“My turn, I think,” Severus said softly, and reached for his wand.  
  
*  
  
The look on Harry’s face—the further blush, the startled confusion, the way that his hand spread towards Severus—was as sweet as all the rest of it.  
  
Severus could not say that his life had included much sweetness, to this point. Happiness in the past few years, in Draco’s friendship; honor and principles and a certain grim pride, of course. But sweetness, the melting taste in his mouth and the sensation in his bones, not much of that.  
  
This time, he could reach out and touch Harry’s hand, and not care that his own hand trembled. This time, he could lean over to kiss him, and not hold back as he would have done before this, hesitant, not sure that his own passion would be reciprocated or even appreciated. This time, he could feel Harry’s fingers entwining with his, and feel a thrill that traveled through his body to his groin, and not regret expressing that thrill by driving his hips forwards into the sheets.  
  
Harry caught the movement when he did it, and bit his lip, his eyes darkening responsively. Severus had a marvelous, wicked idea then, and cast another charm along with the ones that he was using to clean Harry gently out and soothe some of the soreness that Draco would have left.  
  
“What did you  _do_?” Harry demanded, arching on the bed as though someone had commanded him to imitate a rainbow. “It’s like someone injected hot tea into my veins!”  
  
Severus smiled. “I will remove the spell if you wish me to do so. It only makes you possible for you to experience again what you just did.”  
  
“What are you talking about? What…” But Harry was smart enough to trail off when he saw the way that Severus reached down to his groin, and the way that Harry was once again standing up, straining and hard.  
  
Harry half-shook his head, and Severus prepared to remove the spell, though with a hesitant, waiting sense of disappointment. Then Harry broke out into a grin, and asked, “Why didn’t I ever know about that spell before? Is it the kind of thing that they only teach specialty Potions masters? You must be able to brew this many Calming Draughts before you use it?” He reached down and touched himself, and broke off with a gasp, tossing his head back.  
  
Severus knew from experience that the spell renewed exquisite sensitivity, bringing it back below the level of any pain, but he had not known how watching Harry react to that would influence  _him_. Harry was stroking himself now, his eyes half-shut, such bright slits that it hurt to see him and not touch him.  
  
So Severus reached out and caressed Harry’s hip in turn, over the marks that Draco had left, and sneaked a glance at Draco out of the corner of his eye.  
  
Draco was watching Harry with the same sort of fixed, rapt expression that Severus suspected was on his face. Their glances met, and they nodded to each other. This wasn’t a Slytherin moment, between them; it was a moment that Harry Potter’s lovers could share because no one else knew how hot he looked just then, not even him.  
  
 _And no one else will,_ Severus vowed, lowering his head so that he could fasten a hot mouth on Harry’s cock.  
  
Harry cried out and jerked his hand away as though burned. But judging by the way it came back to Severus’s head in the next second, he hadn’t actually been hurt, either by lingering sensitivity or by the spell that Severus had cast. Harry paused once, then began to stroke Severus’s hair. Then he gripped a strand and groaned, the sound rasping out of him as though someone had forced it.  
  
Draco bent down and kissed Harry, cutting off a certain amount of the delicious sounds, to Severus’s regret, but also making such hunger stir in him to get his hands on Harry as he had never felt. He sucked only a moment longer before pulling back and turning Harry gently on his stomach once again.  
  
Harry went, his eyes closed, his hands flexing uselessly. He reminded Severus of a frog he had once seen shocked by electricity. He hid his chuckle against Harry’s back this time, and cast more lubrication and Relaxing Charms.  
  
Harry hissed, quietly, when Severus’s fingers went into him, but Severus only paused until he was sure that his touch was welcome, and then reached more deeply. Harry began to pant, a series of short, sharp little sounds that Draco dipped his head down to swallow again.  
  
“That’s what you do when you’re  _really_ hot for it, isn’t it?” Draco hissed, and his hand tightened in Harry’s hair until Severus was afraid that he might wrench Harry’s head around and hurt his neck.  
  
“Yes,” Harry moaned.  
  
Severus shut his eyes and reached down to grip himself. He was dangerously near to shooting all over the sheets and rendering this exercise academic.  
  
“Yeah, I knew it was,” Draco said, and looked nearly as wild as Harry as he arranged himself up near the pillows. This time, he was the one with Harry’s head in his lap, cheek resting on a knee, and he held Severus’s eyes in a charged, silent challenge to make Harry come without anyone touching his cock this time.  
  
“Merlin,” Severus whispered, starting at the needy tone of his own voice, and coated his hand again with the lubrication charm before driving a third finger inside.  
  
Harry scratched Draco’s leg as he brought one hand down, clawing at Draco’s thighs. Draco hissed a little, but made no move to withdraw. Severus wondered for a moment what it was like for him to feel Harry’s hot breaths over his naked lap, and nearly wanted to trade positions for another moment.  
  
But they would have time for this, they would have time. Severus had no intention of letting this be the end, and he didn’t think either of the other two had, either.  
  
“I’m ready, I’m ready, put it  _in_ ,” Harry snapped suddenly, arching his neck, which had flushed so red that Severus would have been alarmed, if not for his words. “For God’s sake, what are you waiting for, the next Ice Age?”  
  
“That might effectively cool my passion,” Severus murmured. Again his hand shook, this time the one he was removing from Harry’s arse. But he knew that no one would blame him for it. Draco watched with hot, bright eyes as Severus slid slowly into Harry.  
  
Harry was grunting even before he completed the full stretch, and Severus held back, concerned. He had not thought that this would still be so difficult for Harry after the stretching he had done and Draco’s previous fucking. He did not want to hurt Harry, but even more than that, he feared the loss of that delicious heat Harry was showing. He would rather wait a few days than make Harry suffer through this only because he thought he should do it, instead of actually wanting to.  
  
But a second later, Harry shook his head wildly at Severus and reached back a hand that waved in the air for a second before it closed around his hip and clung there. That was at the full extent of Harry’s arm, and Severus wasn’t surprised when his hand slipped off a second later, but the message was clear. Harry then reinforced it with a hiss that sounded surprisingly like the snake language.  
  
“Severus,  _please_. Come on. Do it  _harder_.”  
  
Draco gave a chuckle, or that was what it started out as, but it was so liquid and greedy that Severus had trouble classifying it. Draco bent over, burying his nose in Harry’s hair and murmuring to him. Severus threw his back into his thrusts.  
  
Whatever Harry wanted.  
  
*  
  
 _I can’t wait until the next time I get to fuck him. He’s going to be even more eager, and it’ll be even better._  
  
Draco could feel his cock twitch at that, at the prospect of it being even better. He hadn’t known, hadn’t realized, hadn’t  _felt_ that when he was fucking Harry the first time. It had been glorious. What was better than that? How could anything be?  
  
Now he knew, from the bliss-stricken face that Harry turned up to Draco and the tight, hooked hold that Harry clamped onto his knees. He knew from the blind sheen of Harry’s eyes and the murmurs and whispers and whimpers that trickled past his lips.  
  
Harry had been a little hesitant when Draco was inside him, mainly, Draco thought, because he wasn’t sure whether it would hurt or not. But now he was past that initial hesitation, and racing towards a completion of a different sort.  
  
His cock was hard and straining under him with Severus’s spell. Draco tried to reach it, to stroke it the way Severus had, but then hesitated and held back. No, he wanted more to see if Harry could come without any other kind of stimulation than someone inside him.  
  
Then, the next time, he could try that for himself.  
  
Harry cried out and almost slammed Draco’s chest with his head. Draco caught and cradled him. Severus was fucking him in earnest now, and Harry had slid up the slick sheets and out of his original place. Draco settled back on the pillows, spreading his own legs wide, receiving and welcoming Harry between them.  
  
“Shhh, it’s okay,” Draco murmured to Harry, hands settled in place on his shoulders, curling inwards and stroking soothingly. “It’s just a little harder than it was before. You can endure this. You like this. You want this.”  
  
He wondered if he would go on murmuring reassurances and endearments for the rest of Severus’s turn inside Harry, but then he caught sight of Harry’s recklessly bobbing head, and smiled. Harry was agreeing with all of what Draco had said, or at least the last bit of it. Draco leaned near to whisper some more things.  
  
“You like people inside you like this? You like to be able to trust them? You like to be able to touch them? To have them touch you? What do you like best?” His voice was quickening almost despite himself, despite his resolve to keep it calm and tranquil for Harry, to keep up with the speed of Severus’s thrusts. “What do you want the most? Are you going to want us to do something else after we do this?”  
  
Harry opened his mouth in half a laugh. His eyelids were drooping, fluttering, unhinged from the normal pattern of blinking, he was so delighted. “I want whatever I can have from you,” he whispered. “Whatever you’ll give me. I can trust you—ah!”  
  
Severus had probably caught him on the edge of the prostate with that last thrust. Draco pulled Harry more firmly into his lap, and Severus followed with a low moan, his face flushed and open in the way that Draco had only seen it once before. His hair dangled around him, swaying with a sound like a soft rustle as he thrust again and again, harder and harder, faster and faster.  
  
Harry was gasping again, and although Draco whispered to him once more, there was no sign that he’d heard. Draco smiled and stroked his hair in turn. He could put up with a few minutes of being ignored, when both Harry and Severus were rushing towards their completion.  
  
Severus indeed seemed to be  _rushing,_ what with the way he was holding onto Harry’s hips and hammering into him. Draco had to snicker a little. He’d seen the way Severus had looked at the bruises  _Draco_ had left on Harry. Draco didn’t think he would be so quick to judge anymore, after leaving his own marks on Harry.  
  
Severus paused even as Draco thought that, his mouth hanging open and his tongue trembling. Then he began to pump into Harry, and Draco cradled Harry’s head all the more as he was thrown forwards and into Draco again. Draco murmured soft words and wondered how soon it would be that he could reach down. Clearly Harry wasn’t going to come just from a cock in his arse, not this time.  
  
That led to the thoughts of all the other times that they would have to help and test him, of course.  
  
But then Severus, although he dropped down until his chin rested on Harry’s back, seemed to gather himself and throw his hips and his fervor into it one more time. Harry gave a low cry as Severus pumped into him, his head turning back, his eyes  _rolling_  back into his skull. Draco bent down and kissed his exposed throat, his chest aching—and not because of the way that Harry had slammed into it earlier. He had to wonder how many times Harry had been able to be like this, utterly open and trusting.  
  
 _Not many. Or he wouldn’t have turned to two Slytherins for help._  
  
But Draco found that he didn’t much care about that, about who else might have comforted Harry in the past, or why he might have decided, in his heart of hearts, to accept Draco and Severus. He needed to be here, to experience this, as much as Harry and Severus did. He could only hold on, the way they were, and watch for the opening of the moment between them. He could only cling to as much sanity as the strength of their connection allowed for any of them to have.  
  
He could only be here, and be glad of it.  
  
*  
  
Harry came with his head in Draco’s lap, his arse filled with Severus’s cock, and the bed beneath them that was all of theirs, that was shared, writhing and dancing back and forth with the force of Severus’s thrusts.  
  
His head drooped, languid, when it was done. His breath came out, stutter and stop, and his lungs ached with the force of the heated breath he was drawing out of them. But he was still whole after the explosion of his pleasure, and he was still real. He had the moment of whiteness and joy, the moment afterwards of recovery, and then the moment of stillness as Severus stopped and Draco did in the same moment.  
  
Harry lay there, head hanging and hands dangling, his body so full that it ached like his lungs, and  _breathed._ He had the dim impression that it was something he had never paid proper attention to before.  
  
“Harry? Harry? Are you all right?”  
  
 _Couldn’t a blind man answer that?_ But Harry smiled the second after he thought that. Draco must have called him more than once to have that edge to his voice, the panic that Harry wasn’t responding. Harry had been too busy drifting to notice.  
  
And that wasn’t something that happened to him often, either. When Harry was in the field, he had to be on the edge of his Auror alertness; he had to be tense, looking around, anticipating an attack from any direction. He had to concede certain things to his senses, but his brain was always working to overrule them, and translate the slightest of movements or sounds into a threat.  
  
But here, he had been aware of nothing for long moments but the relaxation pouring through him, the connection, the rapture.  
  
 _That’s one reason that I can trust them. Because they make me feel like that, and they let me come back from it afterwards._  
  
“I’m all right, Draco,” Harry said, finally, although he reckoned that Draco must have seen his smile and known he was conscious, or he would have said Harry’s name again. “Severus.” It took effort that he didn’t think he had left in him, but he managed to rotate his head and open a lazy pair of eyes.  
  
Severus was smiling at him, one hand resting lightly and possessively on Harry’s arse. Harry thought that was close to the most adorable thing he had ever seen, and one day, when he had better control of his mouth, he would tell Severus so.  
  
“As am I,” Severus said, and pulled slowly out of him. Harry shifted dazedly, aware that he was messy and sticky and sore. Well, there were wands and charms to put those things to rights, and in the meantime, he didn’t mind being that way for a while.  
  
“Not forgetting about me,” Draco said, and bent over Harry, and kissed him.  
  
Harry summoned more effort, more will, so that he could raise one hand and run his fingers through Draco’s hair. And he also managed to hold his hand out and accept the half-reverent touch of Severus’s fingers in his palm.  
  
For now, it was enough to breathe, and to be.


	8. Planning Things Forward

“Harry?”  
  
Harry tensed once before realizing that he recognized the voice and turning around. Draco stood behind him with one eyebrow raised, holding out a glass of wine to him. Harry nodded and accepted it. He didn’t try to sip from it, though. As nervous as he was at the moment, he would end up spilling wine all over the sleeve of his expensive robes.  
  
 _Much_ more expensive than he had ever worn before. But this was the Ministry gala where Severus planned to announce his presence to the world, and that meant only the right kinds of robes were acceptable. Draco had insisted.  
  
“Are you still sure this is the right plan?” Harry asked the question in a low voice, although some people were gaping at them already. To see Harry Potter and Draco Malfoy together was an unusual enough sight. They had started the rumors swirling of someone who had lived through the war, someone who had rightfully escaped prosecution, someone who would be joining them tonight, but at the moment, even Ministry officials Harry knew had listened attentively to the rumors seemed to think  _they_ were a more interesting sight.  
  
“It’s the one Severus wanted,” Draco said, and under the cover of turning to put his champagne flute on a passing tray held by a house-elf, he grabbed Harry’s wrist and squeezed it. “Do you want to bow out of the picture for right now? My reputation is good enough to support Severus on my own.”  
  
“But it’ll take some damage when people figure out that he’s been the one brewing your potions,” Harry muttered, shaking his head. “No, I’ll stay.”  
  
Draco sniffed. “I  _like_ that.  _My_ potions. No, only some of them, and not even all of those.”  
  
Harry could only manage a half-hearted smile, though, and Draco seemed to know it. He stepped back and eyed Harry up and down.  
  
“What really has you so nervous tonight?” he asked. “You told us that Weasley already knew about Severus, and you were the one who chose this gala. Do you think that they’re going to sack you from the Aurors when they find out that you knew about Severus’s whereabouts?”  
  
“Not so much that,” Harry admitted, although he thought some of the sour bile in the back of his throat did come from that potential source. “More that…I don’t know what people are going to say when they find out we’re lovers. I don’t—I trust you. I don’t trust  _them_.” He jerked his head at their audience.  
  
“Ah.” Draco moved closer and stood leaning against the wall next to him, raising a privacy ward at the same time. That drew more gapes, but Harry tried to comfort himself with the notion that when Severus walked into the ballroom, they would all be gaping at him instead. It actually wasn’t that comforting. “Think of it like this. Is it worse to be found out as my lover, and Severus’s, than to be found out as our friend?”  
  
“It’s the  _combination_ ,” Harry explained miserably, well aware that he was breathing too fast and that he wasn’t the one who had the right to be nervous tonight. Severus was the one who would soon come out of the wings and have to occupy center stage in front of all those greedy eyes. The least Harry could have done was keep his issues out of the picture to better support Severus. “I know it’s silly, but knowing that I have two lovers, and they’re men, and they’re people who went through trials or would have if the Ministry had known they were still alive, and they’re people I used to not get along with. It’s all that.”  
  
Draco nodded once. “Would it help you to think of this as a battle?”  
  
Harry blinked, and touched his wand. “Not unless you think Severus really will need a bodyguard from some of these people, the way we discussed.”  
  
Draco’s smile lit his whole face, and made Harry relax in a way that he hadn’t known he still could. “No, silly,” he murmured, reaching up and touching Harry’s jaw. That made a spectator startle and drop a glass, which was loud enough to be heard through the privacy ward. “Not unless there’s someone here with a much deeper grudge against Severus than I can imagine is at all possible at this date and time. No, I meant, would it help you to think of it as a battle against enemies, the way you head into every time you pick up your wand as an Auror? That seems to be the only arena you’re confident in.”  
  
Harry snorted. “I’ll have you know that I handle Ministry galas just fine.”  
  
“Oh, of course,” Draco said. “I’ve attended a few, you know. You stand in the corner, scowling at everyone, and especially scowl at the people who invite you to dance. You discuss some business with the Head Auror and the Minister. The only people you smile at are your friends or the other Weasleys. Then you escape as early as possible.”  
  
Harry felt his face burn. It was weird, but he seemed stripped as bare as he’d been in the bed, in a way, as bare as he’d been when Draco and Severus asked to see his scars. No one else had ever noticed that it was nervousness, not just disdain for the people who wanted his autograph and presence, that had kept him from having greater success at Ministry galas, dances, and parties.  
  
“Fine, but not because I’m about to throw up or anything,” Harry said. Draco was still giving him that considering glance that saw straight into his soul. “Just because I don’t like them.”  
  
Draco nodded. “Severus chose this as the place to make his announcement that he’s alive because it’s a refined place, a place where people are likely to stare and gossip instead of reacting with violence, and a place where your reputation as well as mine is known. Everyone will be staring at him. And you and me, yes, but we’ll support you, and we’ll support him, and you’ll support me.” He smiled. “It’s going to cause a splash that’ll last for a long time, but really, we're all the better for it, aren't we? At least it’s not going to involve Aurors hunting him down or reporters immediately besieging you.”  
  
Harry still told himself he was being silly, and maybe he was, but he could breathe more easily now, and that wasn’t a small thing. He nodded and smiled at Draco. “Having someone to fight for will make this better.”  
  
What Draco might have said, he didn’t actually get to hear, because at that moment the door to the ballroom opened and Severus stepped inside, looking around as haughtily as though he expected the crowds to part for him. And they did, but it was with a whispering and hissing that Harry knew meant they actually, might, seriously attack. He put his hand on his wand again anyway.  
  
Draco took his hand and shook his head at Harry. He moved forwards at a stately walk to receive Severus. Harry swallowed, reminded himself that Draco probably knew the rules of battle on this kind of field better than he did, and followed him.  
  
*  
  
Severus had underestimated how overwhelming it would be, to step into the middle of a room and find himself the center of all eyes. It was an experience that he hadn’t had since the last time he had been in front of Potions students.  
  
And  _then,_ he had known that he controlled all the important variables in the situation.  
  
He refused to flinch from the way that someone pointed at him, at the way that two Aurors bunched together at the sight of him, at the way that hands immediately went to wands. He sought out Draco and Harry with his eyes instead, and found them coming towards him, Draco walking a little faster than normal. Harry walked without trying to keep his hand away from his wand, snapping glares at the more persistent of the starers.  
  
Then other people saw Draco and Harry coming towards him.  
  
The murmurs immediately turned and started running the other way. There were even angry hisses mixed in—and Severus didn’t assume that all of the crowd had suddenly decided to remind Harry about his ability to speak Parseltongue. They were calling his name in loud, shocked voices. Some of them were trying to remonstrate with Draco, which would have worked better if Harry and Draco hadn’t been moving past them so rapidly. And then they ranged themselves on either side of Severus, and most of the voices ceased.  
  
Into the silence, Harry spoke loudly. “This is Potions master Severus Snape, a spy for Dumbledore’s cause, who survived the downfall of Voldemort and the end of the war. And he’s been making a living through selling very fine potions since, including some that many of you have probably consumed.”  
  
Dropped jaws answered that, but Severus knew it was true. A lot of the people in this room were his customers, even if they had thought that they were mostly dealing with Draco.  
  
“I sold the potions, and helped him make them,” Draco added, angling his body alongside Severus’s as if he thought he would have to fend off an attack from the left. Well, the thickest cluster of people was there, so perhaps so. “But you’ve used and admired the work of his hands as much as mine. If you dare despise him now, then everyone who makes a disparaging remark had  _better_  not buy from us again.”  
  
A daring move, Severus thought, as Draco’s eyes swept from face to face, but an effective one. The people who used their innocuous potions often came and asked for less innocuous ones later—not necessarily illegal, but made with regulated ingredients, and not available in the quantities they wanted from legitimate apothecaries. Draco and Severus could ruin reputations if they stooped to blackmail.  
  
Suddenly, some people found something to do on the other side of the ballroom. But the Aurors Severus had noted earlier were still striding towards him, and they didn’t slow down even when Harry obviously and ostentatiously took a step in front of him.  
  
“Severus Snape,” said the one in the lead, with a nasal voice that Severus took an instant dislike to, “you are under arrest.”   
  
“For what?” Harry demanded, and stole the attention of some gapers back again.  
  
“For the crimes of murder, torture, being a Death Eater—” said the smaller, but louder, of the pair.  
  
Harry shook his head, a superior smile on his face that shut them up immediately. Severus suspected that not many people had ever been privileged to see Harry using his power like this. He put out a hand and rested it on the small of Harry’s back, beneath the fall of his sleeve, in support and appreciation.   
  
“No,” Harry said. “I looked up those charges before he returned to public view, you see. The Ministry accepted the memories that I could provide them, and the documents Albus Dumbledore had left, including a second will that gave several things to Severus Snape if he survived the war. Dumbledore talked about the Unbreakable Vow he subjected Potions master Snape to in that will, as well. It’s not common knowledge, because the Ministry was a bit embarrassed that someone they’d been prepared to try as a Death Eater was actually a hero, and they thought he was dead, so they never enacted the will. But it was all publicly recorded. I can show you the records if you want.”  
  
“I’d like very much to see them,” said the one with the nasal voice, who hadn’t left off aiming his wand at Severus.  
  
“Of course,” Harry said, and snapped his fingers. “ _Accio_ Severus Snape’s legal records.”  
  
The Aurors started back, staring even more openly now. They seemed to think that Harry had done wandless magic. Severus thought he and Draco were the only ones who had noticed that Harry had used the snap of his fingers to distract them from the wave of his wand.  
  
The only ones who had noticed, and the only ones who would appreciate Harry the way he deserved. Draco leaned in from the other side, pressing hard on Harry’s shoulder, as though to enforce that decision.  
  
Harry tilted his head back, and for just an instant, his eyes fluttered the way they had when Draco entered him. Severus hissed in quiet amusement and nodded to the Aurors ahead of them.  
  
To his credit, Harry could snap back to business in instants, and he reached out and easily caught the dusty box of trial records soaring its way to him. “Now, let’s see,” he said, digging through the papers inside. “Yes, this is the record of the memories that I showed the Ministry, and this is a copy of the will that Dumbledore made.”  
  
The baffled Aurors were lowering their wands, although they glared suspiciously at Severus for as long as they were leaning forwards and reading the records. Then they turned their backs and left the ballroom altogether, walking as though someone had replaced their backbones with iron rods.  
  
Harry chuckled and waved his wand at the box, probably sending it back to its proper place in the Ministry Archives. “It’s not my fault if I’m right, is it?” he asked the world at large.  
  
“I think that there would still be people asking you to explain why you looked at the records at all,” said a witch who had approached them from the side Harry stood on. Severus regarded her warily. She didn’t move like an Auror, which was a point in her favor, but he recognized the look of intense curiosity on her face. If she wasn’t a reporter, she wasn’t far removed from one.  
  
“Of course,” said Harry, giving her a little bow. “Madam Fogstorm, this is Potions master Severus Snape, and Potions master Draco Malfoy. Madam Fogstorm holds a position in the Department of Magical Law Enforcement,” he added, turning to Severus and Draco, his voice determinedly casual.  
  
That there was no more information available than “a position” told Severus it was one of those positions that were not talked about much in public. He managed a polite nod of his own, while Draco immediately moved forwards with his hand out. “Do you feel like shaking hands with a former Death Eater?” he asked.  
  
Madam Fogstorm faintly smiled, but shook it. “A Death Eater who stood his trial and paid the penalty,” she said, and then leaned around Severus and looked at him. “As well as one who did not.”  
  
“I explained that,” interrupted Harry blandly. “The Ministry didn’t see much point in trying someone who was dead.”  
  
“And now that he’s alive?” It was hard to tell who Madam Fogstorm was talking to among the three of them, only that she expected an answer.  
  
Harry shrugged. “The Wizengamot made a decision, based on the information they had at the time. I don’t imagine there’ll be a problem, unless some of the legacies that Dumbledore would have left to Potions master Snape in his will belong to other people who would make a fuss if they were taken from them.”  
  
“I have no intention of trying to claim them,” Severus said at once. Harry had told him about Albus’s second will yesterday, but there was nothing among the bequests that excited Severus. It was enough to know that Albus had made provisions for Severus in case he survived the war. “The Ministry has nothing to fear from me.”  
  
“Not even an exciting new political player, arrived on the scene?” Madam Fogstorm murmured, in what sounded like a deliberately provocative voice. Her eyes darted from him to Harry and back.  
  
 _Not someone who will try to make Harry Potter political?_ Severus understood the message well enough.  
  
He half-ducked his head and let his eyes widen, saying nothing. He did not yet know whether Harry would welcome an induction into politics or not. For that reason, he would leave it up in the air.  
  
Madam Fogstorm studied him for a moment longer, then turned to Harry. Harry seemed to understand the silent message, which surprised Severus. Perhaps he had seen it before. He smiled thinly and shook his head. "As long as the Ministry obeys the rules it's set up for itself, it has nothing to fear from me."  
  
"There might be good reasons for breaking those rules sometimes," said Fogstorm, and looked to Draco's face as if she might find better sense there.  
  
"They would have to be  _good_ reasons, to be worth the consequences," Harry said, lifting his chin. Severus had never seen him like this before, poised and confident and at the same time politely forbidding. "Especially consequences that they seem to fear so much."  
  
Severus held back a snicker. They  _should_ fear the consequences of Harry Potter becoming political. He had a name too potent for the Ministry to just let him bob along in the stream.  
  
"They are," said Madam Fogstorm, "or might be." Then she nodded at them and strolled away, and some of the murmurs and stares went with her. There were people who would be curious about such a high official in the Ministry and what she might have to say to Severus, Severus thought, but more, they would consider him acceptable now that she  _had_ spoken to him.  
  
"Shall we?" Draco asked, extending an arm to Severus. Harry hesitated, then did the same on his other side.  
  
It was not exactly like the vision he had seen, Severus had to admit, as he clapped his hands into place and let Draco and Harry escort him into the middle of the party. It was fragile, and different, and dangerous, and new, and  _desirable_  
  
*  
  
Draco watched in amusement as the fifth wizard drifted up to Severus. The evening since Madam Fogstorm's acceptance and Harry's facing down of the Aurors had been full of people trying to feel out Severus and determine whether he would support their pet projects. They ought to know what the answer was before they accosted him, but it seemed the gala was full of people who hadn't been Slytherins and didn't remember the dreaded Potions Professor of Hogwarts well enough.  
  
He saw Harry's eyes flicker past him, and thus wasn't surprised when a loud voice spoke at his shoulder, although it was obvious that the voice had been meant to make him jump. "Excuse me."  
  
Draco turned around and regarded the burly wizard in front of him with a bland smile. The wizard had the subdued black robes that most Ministry officials wore at parties like this, but he put his head back and regarded Draco as if he was a viper crawling into the middle of much greater splendor. Draco thought that was because of his bad behavior in not dancing to the man's tune, more than anything else, and bit his lip before he spoke, so that his voice wouldn't quiver with laughter.  
  
"Yes?"  
  
The wizard folded his arms. He had thick black braids in his hair, and, more unusually, similar braids in his beard, which swung back and forth as he leaned in to stare at Draco. "Are you aware that you're in the same room with many people whose families were hurt or inconvenienced by your Death Eater activities during the war?" he demanded.  
  
"He's also in the same room with a lot of his Potions clients," Harry said, before Draco could decide on the best response. "And people who escaped prosecution by pleading the Imperius Curse, although it might only have been fear and not the Imperius Curse that made them go along with what Voldemort wanted." The man flinched as though he was going to jump out of his skin, which made Draco feel better about his own involuntary response. "What's your point?"  
  
"Only that he doesn't always attend the Ministry galas, and he should have considered what would follow when he did." The wizard glared at Severus. "And in the company of someone who was considered to be dead."  
  
Draco inclined his head. "I have considered it." He waited, and the wizard's face turned plum while he struggled with his emotions.  
  
"Well?" he finally demanded, when Draco only stood there in peaceful silence and sipped champagne from his glass.  
  
"I have decided that I can bear those consequences," Draco said, and turned to exchange smiles with Harry and Severus. Severus was apparently attending carefully to his conversation with the petitioner wizard in front of him, but he flashed a half-smile in Draco's direction.  
  
The hefty wizard looked back and forth between all three of them, and then gave a shocked gasp and straightened his shoulders. "Well, I  _never!_  You think you can get away with a relationship like that, in front of all the eyes of normal people?'  
  
Harry didn't shrink or flinch, but Draco could guess how the words must have struck him. He reached out and closed his fingers into a circle around Harry's wrist, gently stroking. By the time he let go, Harry's breathing had quieted. "Yes," he said. "I think we can. Because of who we are, and the length of time that's passed since the war."  
  
The hefty wizard apparently had nothing to say to this. He stood there fuming for a few minutes, and Draco leaned his chin on his fist and looked benignly at him. Then the wizard turned and stomped away across the ballroom without saying goodbye.  
  
"You were magnificent."  
  
Draco's smile turned sly as he looked at Harry from under lowered eyelids. He was afraid he couldn't help it. Harry was gazing at him with something that almost seemed like hero-worship. "For facing down a tiresome busybody who had no plans to punish us anyway? Why is that?"  
  
"Because you know the right words and you have the right attitude to face them with," Harry said simply. "I never do."  
  
Draco reached out and smoothed his fingers gently down Harry's shoulder this time. "I think you faced down the Aurors who were coming for Severus pretty well. And you came in with a defense for me from this fellow."  
  
Harry didn't immediately refute what he'd said. He stood there, thinking, instead, and Draco saw a small smile work its way across his mouth when he considered what he had done so far this evening already.  
  
"Yeah, sometimes I'm pretty awesome," said Harry, and his hand settled on Draco's shoulder and squeezed. "But it helps when I have awesome help."  
  
Draco had to bite his lip to avoid laughing again, but this time, it was with a sense of pure joy. Severus had managed to detach himself from his conversation with the tiresome wizard, he saw, and was waiting for them a short distance away. He turned Harry towards him. "Shall we?"  
  
Harry nodded, and they crossed the small expanse of floor that separated them. Draco didn't miss the way that Severus smiled as they came to a halt near him, or the way that Harry relaxed.  
  
Or the way that his own heartbeat slowed down and his breathing deepened. Relaxed but alert, ready to take on the world.  
  
 _Do I dare show a relationship like this? Not only do I dare, but I'm eager for the consequences._


	9. Emergence

“When were you planning to tell us?”  
  
“I did tell Ron,” said Harry, and hid behind his ice cream from the glare that Hermione was giving him. He popped out his head and added, “About Severus being alive, I mean. And I  _did_ send you a letter before that gala where Severus wanted to come out. It’s not my fault that you bundled it into a bunch of other papers and didn’t read it in time.”  
  
Hermione folded her arms, but then glanced around and sighed, seeming to realize that she couldn’t yell at him in front of all the other customers at Fortescue’s. “Fine, that part isn’t your fault, but you should have told us by firecall, at least, or face-to-face like this. Not in a letter.”  
  
Harry glanced at her, then over at Ron. Ron shook his head slightly at him. He hadn’t discussed, at least not in any depth, the incident with the Dark wizard that had resulted in Harry getting that scar over his left eye and Harry not trusting his best friend as much as he used to.  
  
“I wanted to,” said Harry. “But I wasn’t sure how you would react, honestly.”  
  
“If you think that I still have grudges left against Malfoy and Professor Snape,” Hermione began. Ron raised his eyebrows at Harry behind her back. Harry held in a snort with difficulty. He didn’t think Ron had much left against Severus, but Hermione wasn’t speaking for him when it came to Draco.  
  
That was all right. Harry didn’t expect all his loved ones to get along right away. The only thing he wanted was for them to  _try_ , and so far, most of them seemed committed to doing that.  
  
“Not grudges,” Harry said, and hid behind his ice cream again. It was all very well for Draco to talk about how he could see Harry getting more confident, but. This wasn’t a Ministry gala or them being together in their bed. This was something else, something that made Harry’s stomach dance anxiously as he confronted it. “More that I’m with two other people. Two other  _men_. And it happened so suddenly.”  
  
There was a long enough silence that Harry knew he had been right to worry. Maybe he really had nothing to be  _upset_ about, precisely, but Hermione was still concerned, or she would have responded with reassurances right away.  
  
“It does worry me that it happened so suddenly,” Hermione said at last, softly. Harry peeked out from behind his ice cream and saw her toying with her own spoon, spinning it around and around until small drops threatened to fly out of the bowl. “You rushed to Malfoy Manor to prevent these thieves from stealing the Glass of Heart’s Desire, and you just happened to find your own destiny there?” She took a deep breath and looked into Harry’s eyes. “I don’t think that that can happen.”  
  
Harry shook his head. “But I don’t know any reason why Draco and Severus would want to influence me to join them in a romantic relationship, either.” He noticed that Ron still flinched when he said “Draco” and “Severus,” but as long as he didn’t jump the way he used to when Harry said the name “Voldemort,” it was all right. “And why would someone else muck with the Glass to make it show me a vision of being happy with them? No, I think I was lucky, and it was—” Here he hesitated again.  
  
“Go on, mate,” said Ron, after he and Hermione had traded glances for a moment and there was a palpable air of “You do it” surrounding both of them.  
  
“I never had the chance to think much about what I wanted, before,” said Harry, shaking his head a little. “What did  _I_ know? I might have wanted to be with two people, but I never thought about it. I was so busy chasing after the next Auror case, and Dark wizards, and avoiding the press, and standing in the corner of Ministry galas scowling at everyone.” He smiled, remembering Draco’s words. “Or I might have wanted someone to take care of me, but I never considered it deeply enough. I haven’t thought much about being happy the last few years, you know. Only solving whatever case is currently in front of me.”  
  
“I just think that you  _should_ think about it more,” Hermione said, and reached across the table to clasp his hand. “Whether something that happened this quickly is really what you want.”  
  
“But Draco and Severus are the ones slowing me down and stabilizing me so that I have the time to think about it,” said Harry. “Unless you think that there’s some evil plan at work, and neither of us have any evidence of that.” He stared at Hermione challengingly until she looked away.   
  
“It does seem as though one day you were at Malfoy Manor chasing the thieves, and then the next day you were looking for information about Snape’s possible trial, and then you were—with them,” said Ron, picking his way through the words as though they were a rickety bridge that would collapse beneath him. “That’s all. That’s the only thing we worry about.”  
  
“I don’t think they were the only ones who could make me happy,” said Harry. He had thought about it and thought about it, and he was sure of it now, even without Draco’s reassuring words on the subject. He might never have come into contact with the Glass of Heart’s Desire. Did that mean that he never could have figured it out for himself? He didn’t think so. It meant it would have taken more time and he would have stumbled through it more, that was all. But eventually, something would have happened, maybe the kind of injury that had laid him up in St. Mungo’s a time or two, and he would have been left with nothing to do but lie there and think. He had already figured out some things about himself that way, like that he wanted to stay friends with Ron despite the revelations about their friendships.  
  
“Then why be with them at all?” Hermione leaned forwards. “Why be with people who aren’t perfect for you?”  
  
Harry stared at her for a second, before he started grinning. It wasn’t often that he got to be the one to teach Hermione something.  
  
“What? What did I say?” Hermione raised a hand to pat nervously at her hair, a gesture left over from the days when it would frizz at the drop of a wand, and got ice cream in it. Ron drew his wand and cleaned it off for her, but he was snickering, a bit helplessly. Harry had to just smile and shake his head.  
  
“You said that I shouldn’t be with them if they aren’t perfect for me,” Harry said. “Do you know how  _silly_ that sounds? Not everyone has the perfect one out there waiting for them, Hermione. Or is lucky enough to meet them at the age of eleven.”  
  
Hermione flushed and sent a sideways glance at Ron. Ron gave her a perfectly besotted expression in return.  
  
Harry waited patiently for them to concentrate on him again, and then continued, “And in this case, I would have had to work through a lot of not-right relationships before I found my perfect one. Or my perfect two, in my case. I was lucky enough to find people I  _am_ happy with. If I wasn’t happy with them, or if I ever stopped trusting them, then I wouldn’t be with them anymore. But I suspect that won’t happen for a long time.” He smiled into the distance, aware that it was Hermione and Ron’s turn to wait for  _him_ to return to reality, and not unhappy that it should be that way.  
  
“Well, as long as they don’t cause you trouble that you can’t fight,” Hermione said, as slowly as though she thought Harry needed rescuing from trouble like that on a regular basis. “Then it’s fine.”  
  
Harry grinned at her again and bowed. “So glad that I have your permission, Your Highness. Will Your Highness be needing to approve any other aspects of my life before I leave your presence today, or is that sufficient?”  
  
Hermione threw a balled-up napkin at him. Harry dodged, still smiling. He knew that his friends had accepted the news a lot more calmly than most other people would, but then, his friends and his lovers were the people who mattered most to him. To have their calmness and blessing was the greatest gift he  _could_ think of.  
  
*  
  
“Is it true?”  
  
Draco looked up. His visits to this particular apothecary, the closest one in Diagon Alley to the opening of Knockturn, were silent most of the time. He would point to ingredients, most often illegal, and the proprietor would nod and fetch them out, and Draco would pay, and then he would leave, both of them mutually satisfied.  
  
But now the proprietor, a tall woman that Draco could barely remember was called Althea Morningstar, was leaning over the counter and gaping at him. Draco raised his eyebrows. “That I’m expanding my Potions business? Yes. That’s why I’m in here earlier than usual this month. I’ll be back here more often as the business picks up popularity and orders.” He thought Morningstar would like that.   
  
She shook her head and brushed away an important announcement the way she might have brushed away a fly hanging around her barrel of newt eyes. “No. I want to know if it’s true that you’re dating Harry Potter and Severus Snape.”  
  
 _So, that story’s hit the papers?_ Draco gave her a very small bow. “That part is true. Whatever else the papers are reporting, I would have to have a look at it before agreeing with it. It might not be true, and agreeing to too much could hurt me, you know.”  
  
She fell for it, and dragged out the paper from under the counter. Draco considered the front page, and smiled a little. The story was probably Skeeter’s, but she had done a creditable job in making it seem calm and sober. There was only the faintest hint of girlish excitement in some of the phrases, and the photograph on the front page was one of those taken at the gala showing Harry, Draco, and Severus laughing together.   
  
“Yes, it’s true,” said Draco, and gave the paper back to Morningstar. “Remarkably true, for the  _Daily Prophet_.”  
  
Morningstar took on a sly expression he wouldn’t have thought her capable of. Then again, he had never spent much time around her before. “Good. Then I can win that little bet I have going with Laura next door.”  
  
Draco half-laughed. If someone had that reason for reacting calmly to the announcement, then good. He could hardly fault them. “I hope you do win it,” he said, and turned around to leave the shop. “But hurry, because they could come out with another story tomorrow that’s not half as accurate.”  
  
“I’ll keep that in mind, Mr. Malfoy.” Something in Morningstar’s voice made him glance over his shoulder, in time to catch the jar of pickled beetles she tossed him. “A little consideration, and early wedding gift, if you like.”  
  
Draco snorted, but didn’t bother to correct her. Beetles were beetles, and useful in all sorts of potions and bases. He cast a few charms on the jar to make the glass unbreakable, then tucked it away and stepped out into Diagon Alley.  
  
“ _There_ he is!”  
  
Several wizards were marching rapidly towards him, all of them with the  _Prophet_ in their hands and determined expressions on their faces. One or two had wands out, too. Draco calmly and expertly raised Shield Charms around himself. He had grown to be good at them since the war, and Severus had improved his when they started living together. Add the tutoring he had got from a Defense expert in the last few days, and Draco thought they would stand up to any hexes his detractors wanted to hurl.  
  
The wizards didn’t throw hexes, though. They came to a halt outside his shields and stared at him with enough contempt that Draco felt justified in smiling at them and nodding. “Did you have something to say to me?” he asked.  
  
“Have you really corrupted good and  _moral_ people into a relationship with you?” demanded one of the wizards, taking a step forwards. “I didn’t know that you were that kind of pervert! I’m regretting buying any potions from you.”  
  
Draco took a long, slow breath. Well, he had known that one of the consequences from his relationship with Severus and Harry might be a loss in his business. He had enough money saved that he could take the hit, and in the meantime, he suspected some people would step in to fill the place of his departing customers, if only because they wanted to see what someone so scandalous could brew. “All right,” he said.  
  
In the end, Harry and Severus were worth it.  
  
The lead wizard opened his mouth, and either realized there was no more to say or that he would look ridiculous saying it. He turned and walked away, every line of his back conveying his disgust. Draco looked at the rest of the small crowd.  
  
They milled back and forth for a moment, as though they knew they ought to do something, but didn’t know what it was. Then one woman stepped out in front of them, raising a hand that calmed them. “I don’t know why you did this,” she told Draco. “Why you announced it. You could have got away with a lot more if you had just kept it quiet.”  
  
Draco grimaced. He recognized her, vaguely. Someone else who made the round of the shops in Knockturn and Diagon Alleys, living on the edge between legal and illegal. “I know that I could have,” he said. “But that’s not what Harry wanted. And not what Severus wanted, either,” he added, remembering both the gala and the details of his vision in the glass that Severus had shared with him.  
  
“And you always do what your lovers want?” The woman’s eyes were sharp, her voice accusing.  
  
“In this case, yes,” Draco said. “They’re the people who matter most in the world to me.”  
  
The woman sighed and looked around as though she wanted to collect any eyes in the area and focus them on her, instead of him. “You know that you’re looking at some loss of business, for this, and perhaps you’ll also make fewer people trust Auror Potter and Potions master Snape.”  
  
“That’s a loss all of us are prepared to risk,” said Draco. He saw that the wizards behind her had put their wands away, but he kept the Shield Charm up anyway. There was no reason to be foolishly trusting. He wanted people he could trust, but he had never wanted a large number of them to spread it around to.  
  
“It’s still the wrong decision, for a lot of reasons,” said the witch, and turned her back.  
  
The others followed her, giving him disgusted or disappointed looks on the way. Draco ended up shrugging and waiting until the last of them were ought of sight before he Apparated. His heart was fluttering erratically.  
  
He was still sure that he had made the right decision, but he could use some reassurance from other people.  
  
*  
  
“Draco? What’s wrong?”  
  
Severus had known something was from the moment Draco passed his lab without stopping to deposit the new ingredients from Morningstar’s Methodicals in their proper places, but he had been in the midst of a delicate brewing process and hadn’t been able to leave it. He had finished what he was doing as hastily as was compliant with proper procedure, though, and then followed Draco.  
  
He’d found Draco in the same sitting room where they had greeted Harry on his last visit to the Manor, a glass of wine held so loosely in his hand that he was in danger of dropping it. Draco was never normally so careless of the carpets. Severus sat down beside him and took the glass away from him.  
  
That earned him a strange look from Draco, which fluttered into a more gracious one when he traced Severus’s line of sight from his hand to the carpet. He nodded and sighed, leaning back in his chair. “Thank you. I would have let it simply flop on the floor, and then I would have been upset later.”  
  
“Someone confronted you about our relationship?” Severus made it a guess, but Draco sighed again and collapsed onto his shoulder, which seemed to confirm it. Severus rubbed Draco’s shoulder gently, murmuring, “You knew there would be some.”  
  
Draco nodded. “But this crowd included a fellow Potions brewer, and someone who said they would never buy from me again.”  
  
Severus paused. “Ah.” Not many people would believe it, especially now that they knew some of Draco’s potions had Severus’s handiwork involved, but Draco took immense pride in his craft, and even in the system of discreet owls he had set up that let people order without implicating themselves. He had known that his business would suffer, had accepted it as one of the prices of public announcement—along with the Howlers that crashed uselessly against the wards and the lurid articles in the papers—but it was one thing to think that, and another to confront it.  
  
Draco turned and suddenly looked up at him. Severus caught his breath at both the shine in Draco’s eyes and the tremble in the hand Draco placed in his own.  
  
“It is worth it,” Draco whispered. “I know that, but make me believe it.”  
  
Severus promptly kissed him, bending him back over the couch. Draco went without a murmur of protest, although he opened his mouth and ran his tongue along Severus’s in a deliberately provocative manner. Severus, remembering what they had done on this couch, nudged his legs up beside Draco’s.  
  
Draco seemed to gain strength, along with heat, as they kissed. His hands had been cold, even sweaty, but they warmed, and he lifted his head when their lips parted with a self-satisfied, dopey expression that Severus had never seen before.  
  
Severus would have spoken, or maybe Draco would have, but it was Harry who spoke, from the doorway. “Wow.”  
  
*  
  
Harry had come to the Manor not sure what to expect, other than a good meal and a lot of time with Draco and Severus. He hadn’t known if they would want to talk about the public’s reaction to Skeeter’s article, or whether they would want to talk about potions or something else entirely. Harry couldn’t contribute much to a conversation about Potions, but he would do his best to put aside his reservations and talk anyway.  
  
But instead, he had stepped into the sitting room where the house-elves had told him Draco and Severus were, and found them kissing, Draco bent back beneath Severus in a way that made Harry flush as he imagined what  _he_ must have looked like, writhing under Severus on the bed they’d shared. And then both Draco and Severus glanced up with bright, incredible eyes, one of Severus’s hands splayed possessively on Draco’s chest, as though he wanted to gather up his heart.  
  
“Are you well, Harry?” Severus didn’t withdraw from Draco, but glanced uncertainly back and forth between them, as though he didn’t know which of them needed him more. Harry half-smiled and slid his cloak from his shoulders. An elf was there to take it at once, squeaking and bowing and vanishing with it.  
  
He moved forwards, aware that his half-smile had grown into a full one, and aware that it was his turn to reassure them. He dropped into a crouch on the floor beside them and kissed Draco on the mouth as Draco turned in his direction.  
  
It started out slow at first, but then Draco’s eyes shut and his lips parted. Harry attended to him with long, careful passion, and then leaned up and kissed Severus in turn. By the end of it, both of them looked completely satisfied.  
  
“I was only reacting to how incredible you look together.” Harry settled back and gestured at them. He couldn’t stop grinning. He didn’t know if he could even put it into words, the sight he’d had of them. “Please, continue.”  
  
Draco opened his mouth as if to contest that, but Severus, his eyes on Harry and his expression thoughtful, shook his head and pinned Draco to the couch with his hands again. Then he leaned in to kiss him once more.  
  
Harry reveled in it, the way that Draco’s face got more and more flushed, and his head tilted back as if he wanted to have miles of neck to expose to Severus. Neither of them were looking at him anymore, but that was okay with him. To know that they trusted him this much, that they would just snog and hold each other in front of him, was great. There was no end to the connection that circled back and forth between them, the growing strength of it and the heat that hammered at Harry’s heart from beneath his ribs.  
  
At last, Draco made a mild sound of discomfort, and Severus drew back from him and settled himself once more into the cradle formed by Draco’s thighs. His expression was smug and placid, and he didn’t show any sign of stirring. He leaned his chin on his own shoulder and watched Harry out of half-lidded eyes.  
  
“How was your day?” Harry asked, and he was grinning crazily and half-hard. It didn’t matter. He just wanted to stay here and look at them forever.  
  
“There was something upsetting, but I can’t remember it now,” Draco said, and extended a languid hand to him. Harry leaned forwards and kissed the webs of skin between Draco’s fingers, one by one. Draco was flushed and panting by the end of it, and he reached further, touching the back of Harry’s neck. “I think you should come here so you can greet us properly.”  
  
Severus nodded his approval of the plan, and Harry stood up, kissed him, and leaned across to kiss Draco again. He was just getting into the spirit of the thing when he heard a frantic hooting, and an owl fluttered into the room.  
  
Harry turned and stared, then sighed when the owl landed on his arm. He had been afraid that something would like this would happen, because he was still an Auror, and one who would investigate anonymous letters, unlike some others. And since he intended to stay with Draco and Severus  _and_ the Aurors for a long time, of course it would happen sooner or later.  
  
“Sorry,” he said sheepishly, and opened the letter. It was one of the usual, in a handwriting that slanted so strongly it was probably generated with a charm, and which implored him to go as soon as possible to a village in the southwest of England where the Dragon’s Hoarders were attacking a buried vault that might contain Dark artifacts. Harry dropped the letter the moment he had memorized the Apparition coordinates, and called to the house-elves to bring his cloak back.  
  
“Should  _you_ be the one to go?”  
  
Harry started and glanced over his shoulder. Severus had picked up the letter, but he was already passing it on to Draco, which was enough to tell Harry that Severus had absorbed everything important about it. His eyes glittered at Harry, who found himself flushing.  
  
“Well, I’m the one they sent it to,” Harry explained, as gracefully as he could. “And a lot of other Aurors don’t believe the tips, or don’t get there in time, because they have to wait for other people to catch up with them…”  
  
“You mean, they take precautions, and they don’t run off alone,” Severus said, and stood up. He crossed the floor between them and Harry, catching him close. Harry leaned against his chest and sighed, some of his sense of urgency dissipating. “I find myself thinking that you should be more like them, now that we have you. I will not lose you like this.”  
  
“Well, but I mean, it’s like when the Dragon’s Hoarders were attacking the Manor, and I came in time to stop them from doing any damage,” Harry said, looking back and forth between Draco and Severus. Draco stood up with his hand on his wand. “You don’t want other people to suffer because I’m not there, do you?”  
  
“I could contemplate with calmness the suffering of people I’ve never met, except that it matters to you,” Draco said. “So why don’t we go with you? That way, we can fight them all together.”   
  
“But I don’t want you hurt,” Harry said, and bristled at the thought of it.  
  
Severus gently put a hand beneath his chin and tilted it up. “Then why can you not understand how we feel?” he whispered. “That we care for you and do not wish to see you hurt, either?”  
  
Harry stared at him with his mouth slightly open, and didn’t close it even when he felt Draco move in behind him and loop his arms gently around Harry’s chest. Then he groaned and let his head collapse back against Draco’s neck. “I really am an idiot.”  
  
“No,” Draco whispered into his ear. “Only inexperienced in the ways of being with other people. Let us come with you.”  
  
Harry nodded once, and then waited for Draco and Severus to gather their wands. His heart was hammering the way it usually did before he went into one of these battles, but he knew it was as much joy as adrenaline this time.  
  
 _We really are together. That’s what this really means._  
  
The house-elves brought his cloak then, and he hurried towards the nearest door that would let him Apparate from the Manor, Severus and Draco discussing battle tactics beside him.  
  
 _I think that always having them beside me sounds like a bloody good idea, right now._  
  
The End.


End file.
